This is a quick and dirty script for automatically numbering headings and example sentences in google docs documents. It's designed for linguistics papers.

Download the document as an ODT file, then run it through the script as follows:

python numberize.py infile.odt outfile.odt

The output can be imported back into google docs, or opened using OpenOffice or a number of other packages.

This should work with the standard OS X Python installation (so long as the Python version is ≥ 2.5).

To introduce a numbered example, write a series of upper case letters enclosed in parantheses, followed either by a tab or by two or more spaces:

(XYZ)   My example...

To refer back to the example, simply write (XYZ) in the text. In addition to references to individual examples, the script recognizes ranges of the following form:

...blah blah blah examples (AB-XY)...

If you want the example to be numbered using Roman numerals, introduce the upper case letters with a #:

(#ABC)  My Roman-numbered example.

Then refer back to it as (ABC). The script handles references to a/b/c subexamples in a very basic way. If you have an example of the following sort:

(LMN)   a. Blah blah blah...
        b. Blah blah blah...

You can refer either to (LMN), (LMNa) or (LMNb). Note that the script is not aware of the sub-examples (you could just as well write (LMNz), which would come out as (2z) if (LMN) were the second arabic-numbered example in the document). You can also write things like (ABc-d), which comes out as (20c-d), or (ABa/e), which comes out as (20a/e).

To avoid bracketed words being mistaken for references to examples, the script assumes that no subexamples are labeled with more than one letter. (If a brackted word is mistaken for a reference, this is not usually a problem, unless an example happens to be defined with the corresponding label.) You can change this default by modifying the value of MAX_SUB_EXAMPLE_LETTERS.

References to non-existent examples are ignored. This can happen sometimes if you put acronyms in parantheses (e.g. "The Uniformity of Theta Assignment Hypothesis (UTAH)"). In this case, so long as there is no example labeled UTAH, nothing will go wrong.

Occasionally, you may want to explicitly specify that something which looks like a reference to an example is in fact not. (For example, if you have the word 'I' in parantheses in a gloss, and an example labeled (I)) You can prevent a sequence of capital letters in parentheses from being interpreted as a reference to an example by insering a bang: (!FOO). The output (!FOO) can be produced using (!!FOO); (!) will come out unaltered. It should rarely if ever be necessary to use bangs in the manner -- the need arises only if you happen to have defined an example with the corresponding label.

Headings and sub-headings are automatically numbered in the output. If you want to refer back to a section, introduce the heading with a sequence of upper case latters followed by a period:

ABC. My heading

You can then get the number of this heading using $ABC. If you do not want a heading to be numbered, precede it with a *:

*My heading

The * is stripped in the output and the heading is left unnumbered. To produce the literal output $ABC, use $$ABC.

Footnotes can be numbered for future reference. Currently, the script assumes that footnotes will be numbered on a per-document basis (rather than per page or per chapter). To number a footnote, use a sequence of upper case letters followed by a period as the first non-whitespace characters in the footnote. E.g.:

FOO. My footnote which is labeled FOO.

If you want to produce the literal output FOO. at the beginning of the footnote, escape using !:

!FOO. My unlabeled footnote which begins "FOO".

As before, you can use !!FOO. to obtain the literal output !FOO.. To get the number of a labeled footnote, use ^LABEL (escaping using ^^LABEL).