rusin@ux1.lbl.gov (David J Rusin) (06/09/89)
OK, I've had enough. I use a word processor to make my letters look pretty, a spell-checker to make sure they only have real words in them, and a phrase-checker to pick out glaring bad phrases. Despite it all, a letter I just sent out had "form" where it should have had "from". I need a sentence-checker to look for errors on a less local level. Now, I know human languages are notoriously difficult to understand, but in third grade we learned a very mechanical process (diagramming sentences) that could at least see if a sentence follows the rules of ordinary English syntax. Has anyone found a program that will do this, and which is willing to report errors like "I can't undertand the following sentence..."? I'll take what I can get, but of course the ideal is public domain source and executable; all the better if I don't need to use more disk space to store another English-language dictionary in addition to the spell-checker. Dave Rusin, Math. Sciences Research Institute, Berkeley CA Internet: rusin@ux1.lbl.gov UUCP: ...!ucbvax!ux1!rusin
Chris.Maidt@p8.f30.n147.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Chris Maidt) (06/11/89)
In an article of <8 Jun 89 19:35:04 GMT>, rusin@ux1.lbl.gov (David J Rusin) writes: >OK, I've had enough. I use a word processor to make my letters look >pretty, a spell-checker to make sure they only have real words in them, >and ... If you find one please let me know. My friend is willing to teach me how to diagram sentances that are 'non-standard' ... and I think I could modify whatever code you get to reflect America's substandard english skills. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . cmaidt%metnet@uokmax.uucp . . . postmaster@metnet.fidonet.org . . . ...!att!okccrsh!uokmax!metnet!cmaidt . ... . . postmaster%metnet@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu . . . FidoNets 1:147/25.0 & .18, 10.0, 30.8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -- Chris Maidt - via FidoNet node 1:147/10 UUCP: ...!uokmax!metnet!30.8!Chris.Maidt INTERNET: Chris.Maidt@p8.f30.n147.z1.FIDONET.ORG
djm@etive.ed.ac.uk (D Murphy) (06/13/89)
Not sure if this is *exactly* what was required, but a friend of mine has
just taken delivery of a program called "RightWriter" which is the logical
extension to spell checkers and such. You save the file and let the program
go through it - it makes suggestions for clarity, `strength', spelling,
grammar, syntax and punctuation within the text (these are reported in <<>>s
so that they can be readily stripped out again later). At the end readability,
strength and such like are given as indices and scales, and words not in the
lexicon are listed.
It is configurable and I was hugely impressed (after, admittedly, pointing
out to him when told what he was going to get that I did *not* like the
idea of an American program telling me my prose stinks :-)).
Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the company who supplied it,
or the cost, but if anyone is interested I could find out. This implies the
disclaimer that I'm not connected with them in any way.
Murff....
JANET: djm@uk.ac.ed.etive Internet: djm%ed.etive@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Murff@uk.ac.ed.emas-a Murff%ed.emas-a@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
trinity@uk.ac.ed.cs.tardis trinity%ed.cs.tardis@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
D.J. Murphy *Artificial* intelligence ? Evidently.....kleonard@gvlv2.GVL.Unisys.COM (Ken Leonard) (06/13/89)
* In an article of <8 Jun 89 19:35:04 GMT>, rusin@ux1.lbl.gov (David J Rusin) writes:
*
* >OK, I've had enough. I use a word processor to make my letters look
* >pretty, a spell-checker to make sure they only have real words in them,
* >and ...
*
* If you find one please let me know. My friend is willing to teach me how to
* ...
Ahhhhh FOoooeeeeyyyyy...
What we really need is a spell-checker which will handle:
1) acronyms and proper names with arbitrary, absolutely required
capitalization and/or slashes-dashes;
2) forbidden words, i.e. those in the furnished dictionary which the user
chooses to exclude;
3) suspicious words, i.e. those in the furnished dictionary which the user
desires to permit only in limited circumstances;
4) global (i.e. per file system), group (i.e. per directory branch) and
document (i.e. per single document) dictionaries in hierarchy;
5) compound terms as if single words, hyphenated or slashed or not.
-----
Regardz,
Ken