Only convert exactly three dots into ellipses

[cocoliliace]

Initial checklist

• I read the support docs
• I read the contributing guide
• I agree to follow the code of conduct
• I searched issues and discussions and couldn’t find anything (or linked relevant results below)

Affected package

retext-smartypants@6.2.0

Steps to reproduce

import {retext} from 'retext'
import retextSmartypants from 'retext-smartypants'

const file = await retext()
  .use(retextSmartypants)
  .process('...."')

console.log(String(file))

Actual behavior

All 4 dots are converted to a single ellipsis.

Expected behavior

3 dots should be sufficient to form an ellipsis. Additional dots should not be merged into the same ellipsis.

The use case is when we use ellipsis at the end of a sentence and need a period right after it. Currently there's no way to express it with retext-smartypants.

This punctuation style is defined here:

• https://www.iup.edu/writingcenter/writing-resources/punctuation/using-ellipses.html#:~:text=Using%20an%20ellipsis%20to%20omit%20words%20from%20the%20end%20of%20a%20sentence:&text=Notice%20that%20when%20using%20an,a%20period%20after%20the%20citation.
• https://www.thepunctuationguide.com/ellipses.html
• and discussed informally in a writing community: https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/z744l7/do_you_use_a_period_after_ellipsis/

The same issue has been opened before in #9 but that issue contained other problems and was closed with only the other problems resolved.

I can help implement it if no one else wants to, but I'm not sure how we want to go about supporting this. Here are some ways I thought of:

1. change the behaviour of 'spaced', 'unspaced', and true to only convert 3 dots a time. This would be a breaking change to anyone currently using more than 3 dots for ellipsis, but idk if anyone does that
2. add a '3dots' option to ellipses. This would guarantee backwards compatibility but make the config harder to maintain, becuase it's not exclusive with the 'spaced' and 'unspaced' options, so we would likely need a '3dots-spaced' and '3dots-unspaced', which would get doubled again when there's another non-exclusive option in the future
3. change the type of ellipses to an object with space and 3dots each being a boolean field. This would be a breaking change but we can overload the option to continue supporting strings | null | undefined
4. Add a new boolean field like ellipsis-3dots and keep the current one. Backwards compatible but would probably make the API too complex

I'm thinking 1 or 3. 1 if the assumption that nobody uses more than 3 dots for ellipses is reasonable or if we are fine with a small breaking change for those users. 3 otherwise.

The name 3dots might not be the best too

Runtime

No response

Package manager

No response

Operating system

No response

Build and bundle tools

No response

[wooorm]

What are your thoughts on 5 dots? etc?

Additional dots should not be merged into the same ellipsis.

I dunno.... to illustrate, that just now. That’s maybe how I’d write it, but still, properly that could just be a single ellipsis.

In the end I’d think 3-non-breaking is what I’d go with.

---

there is also something with being compatible with SmartyPants.
I do see there in the version changelog/source code (1.3: Tue 13 May 2003):

    +   Due to popular demand, four consecutive dots (....) will now be
        turned into an ellipsis followed by a period. Previous versions
        would turn this into a period followed by an ellipsis. If you
        really want a period-then-ellipsis sequence, escape the first
        period with a backslash: \....

I’m a bit more wary of introducing a big breaking change for that (and the escape thing also, I don’t see that working well here)

[cocoliliace]

What are your thoughts on 5 dots? etc?

I'm thinking every three non-escaped dots should get converted into an ellipsis. The rest are kept unmodified. So 5 dots would be an ellipsis followed by 2 dots. 6 dots would be two ellipses. 7 would be two ellipses followed by one dot and so on. This is the behaviour of smartypants@0.2.2 as well.

I do see there in the version changelog/source code (1.3: Tue 13 May 2003):

+   Due to popular demand, four consecutive dots (....) will now be
    turned into an ellipsis followed by a period. Previous versions
    would turn this into a period followed by an ellipsis. If you
    really want a period-then-ellipsis sequence, escape the first
    period with a backslash: \....

I’m a bit more wary of introducing a big breaking change for that (and the escape thing also, I don’t see that working well here)

I don't see how implementing the changes I proposed would introduce a breaking change to this? The quoted changelog says 4 dots now turns into an ellipsis followed by a period, which is what I'm proposing too. retext-smartypants currently converts 4 dots into just an ellipsis. It looks like the other way around, where retext-smartypants currently is incompatible with smartypants and this proposal would fix it. Am I misunderstanding something?