Declare acronyms and abbreviations to automatically correct spaces after periods?

Question

If I understand correctly, (La)TeX assumes that a period after a lower-case letter ends a sentence while a period after an upper-case letter does not. Unfortunately, my documents usually contain plenty of acronyms and abbreviations. Unless I remember to use \@, the spacing after periods is wrong:

\documentclass[convert={density=150},varwidth]{standalone}
\begin{document}
\noindent
\makebox[0.7in][l]{Incorrect:}%
Your computer needs more RAM.  I can give you some.\\
\makebox[0.7in][l]{Correct:}%
Your computer needs more RAM\@.  I can give you some.\\
\makebox[0.7in][l]{Incorrect:}%
Colors (red, blue, etc.) are nice.\\
\makebox[0.7in][l]{Correct:}%
Colors (red, blue, etc.\@) are nice.
\end{document}

Is it possible to declare certain strings to be acronyms or abbreviations to invert this assumption? If so, this would reduce the number of spacing errors in my documents.

For example:

\documentclass[convert={density=150},varwidth]{standalone}
\usepackage{magicalacronymhelper}
\declareacronym{RAM}
\declareabbr{etc}
\begin{document}
\noindent
\makebox[0.7in][l]{Correct:}%
Your computer needs more RAM.  I can give you some.\\
\makebox[0.7in][l]{Correct:}%
Your computer needs more RAM\@.  I can give you some.\\
\makebox[0.7in][l]{Correct:}%
Colors (red, blue, etc.) are nice.\\
\makebox[0.7in][l]{Correct:}%
Colors (red, blue, etc.\@) are nice.
\end{document}

Answer 1

There is no way to do this automatically, unless you're willing to use XeLaTeX and the unsupported package xesearch.

The best thing you can do is to define macros \acro and \abbr:

\newcommand{\acro}[1]{#1\@}
\makeatletter
\newcommand{\abbr}{\@ifstar\@firstofone\@abbr}
\newcommand{\@abbr}[1]{#1.\@}
\makeatother

Complete example:

\documentclass{article}
\newcommand{\acro}[1]{#1\@}
\makeatletter
\newcommand{\abbr}{\@ifstar\@firstofone\@abbr}
\newcommand{\@abbr}[1]{#1.\@}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\noindent
Your computer needs more \acro{RAM}.  I can give you some.\\
Your computer needs more RAM\@.  I can give you some.\\[3pt]
Colors (red, blue, \abbr{etc}) are nice.\\
Colors (red, blue, etc.\@) are nice.\\[3pt]
I like citrus flavors: orange, lemon, lime, \abbr*{etc}. They are tasty\\
I like citrus flavors: orange, lemon, lime, etc\@. They are tasty
\end{document}