7 ms·

Rant – An all-purpose procedural text engine

302 points by sansnomme 8y ago

midgetjones 8y ago
This looks great! Is there anything similar available in other languages? BTW if the author is about, there's a broken link at the bottom of the homepage, to https://berkin.me/rantdocs https://berkin.me/rantdocs
- Jenz 8y ago
  How I wish this was in C.
  - gameswithgo 8y ago
    could ahead of time compile it to a native dll and pretend
    - Jenz 8y ago
      Oh? Friend, may you link me to wherever I can learn more about this? I wanted this in C, so that I could bind it to Crystal [1]. [1]: https://crystal-lang.org https://crystal-lang.org
- jillesvangurp 8y ago
  There's a few natural language generation frameworks out there. I came across this one for Java a few years ago: https://github.com/simplenlg/simplenlg https://github.com/simplenlg/simplenlg
- TheBerkin 8y ago
  Fixed. Thanks for pointing it out.
arduinomancer 8y ago
Really neat. This is something I wouldn’t even know to look for as a library.
rdiddly 8y ago
This is the most hilarious package. Can't wait to try it out!
Space_Lord_ 8y ago
Related, if you're looking for more information: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/2nagbb/i_created_rant_a_language_to_make_procedural_text/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/2nagbb/i_created_r... https://berkin.me/rant/ https://berkin.me/rant/
atemerev 8y ago
Nice! Let’s write some Twitter bots with that...
evacchi 8y ago
Reminds me of polygen (Italian) https://polygen.org/it/manuale https://polygen.org/it/manuale
porker 8y ago
I've looked for this and never found the right search term. Nice! Likewise, I can't identify the search terms to find a library for extracting data from a text corpus - e.g. to identify addresses, dates, names, phone numbers. Does one exist? I've smashed together a few regular expressions to brute-force it, but the accuracy is very low.
- thom 8y ago
  Loosely you're talking about named entity recognition/extraction (strictly you might not include addresses etc under this definition who but who cares). You might get some mileage out of tools like: https://nlp.stanford.edu/software/CRF-NER.shtml https://nlp.stanford.edu/software/CRF-NER.shtml
  - najarvg 8y ago
    Stanford NER is very powerful. If you dont want to mess around with Java, there are also Python libraries that do this very effectively and easier to get started on (e.g. NLTK or Spacy). A high level intro for both with code snippets - https://towardsdatascience.com/named-entity-recognition-with-nltk-and-spacy-8c4a7d88e7da https://towardsdatascience.com/named-entity-recognition-with...
benj111 8y ago
I'm reading the replies here trying to ID the one generated by Rant.
PM_ME_YOUR_PUFZ 8y ago
I was bored of regular expressions anyway
onion-soup 8y ago
AAaaaaand it still looks like a machine code, not human readable code: [rs:10;\s]{[rn]. - what is this? ::&a> ?? what is a? what is $?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- TheBerkin 8y ago
  Hi, most of this is shorthand for either several functions or functions with longer names. For example, [rs:10;\s] is the same as [rep:10][sep:\s]. The last example is used to synchronize results between dictionary queries. This particular one is short for "output the same word as any other query to this table with the match ID 'a'." In retrospect it was a poor decision to use shorthand forms in prominent example snippets, and I'll consider revising them.
abledon 8y ago
This would be a cool addon into a Unity C# game, easily spin up some procedural dialog by NPCs, have some rhyming characters, spit out some 'clues' in their rhymes then save those as text variables and store them in the environments puzzle as solution pieces. Kind of dehumanizing though for the game, like sucking out the soul.
- Eli_P 8y ago
  That's the way the heart of games like Event[0] or Façade works.
theandrewbailey 8y ago
I made a random sentence generator in Python about 10 years ago. It doesn't have any kind of pattern control (totally random), but it has different lists of nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc, and outputs grammatically correct sentences. I might steal some ideas from this, if I ever get around to working on it again.
appleflaxen 8y ago
this is a topic related to spintext, which is a technique for spam-filter avoidance.
hsndmoose 8y ago
Download link on website busted for me. Hugged to death? Getting BlobNotFound.
moopling 8y ago
I used this a while back when I was researching a way to help people with macular degeneration. I'd created some visual distortions which could be applied to a VR headset (if you had eye-tracking information) which I hoped would improve reading ability in MD patients. I used Rant to generate some random text in Unity and then measured how reading speed varied.
- TheBerkin 8y ago
  Rant dev here-- Wow! This has to be the most interesting use case I've heard of in a while.
mdaniel 8y ago
I was expecting to find a reference in the comments to Baba https://github.com/Lokaltog/baba-core#readme https://github.com/Lokaltog/baba-core#readme and its [in]famous example https://git-man-page-generator.lokaltog.net https://git-man-page-generator.lokaltog.net
moomin 8y ago
Funnily enough, there was a procedural text generation system in Cambridge (Phoenix) back in the day called... RANT. There was also one called TOAD which was more venerable and popular. Anyone posting word salad was inevitably accused of using TOAD’s output.
mmastrac 8y ago
This reminds me of an unrelated C program called "rant" from 30+ years ago: https://grack.com/code/legacy/rant/rant.c https://grack.com/code/legacy/rant/rant.c
dmix 8y ago
But, why?
kemitchell 8y ago
It's just a rabbit! > It has been refined to include a dizzying array of features... RUN AWAY!
mastrsushi 8y ago
Sounds like a fun personal project, but looks like another esoteric language no one will use.
IngoK 8y ago
This is really a fun library to play with! :) I've just written a little post about using Rant in Python if someone doesn't want to go into C#. https://kleiber.me/blog/2019/02/08/quick-tip-text-generation-rant-python/ https://kleiber.me/blog/2019/02/08/quick-tip-text-generation...
- mboto 8y ago
  Excellent post, I was looking for something in python.

302 points by sansnomme 8y ago

This looks great! Is there anything similar available in other languages? BTW if the author is about, there's a broken link at the bottom of the homepage, to https://berkin.me/rantdocs https://berkin.me/rantdocs

Jenz 8y ago
How I wish this was in C.
- gameswithgo 8y ago
  could ahead of time compile it to a native dll and pretend
  - Jenz 8y ago
    Oh? Friend, may you link me to wherever I can learn more about this? I wanted this in C, so that I could bind it to Crystal [1]. [1]: https://crystal-lang.org https://crystal-lang.org
jillesvangurp 8y ago
There's a few natural language generation frameworks out there. I came across this one for Java a few years ago: https://github.com/simplenlg/simplenlg https://github.com/simplenlg/simplenlg
TheBerkin 8y ago
Fixed. Thanks for pointing it out.

arduinomancer 8y ago

Really neat. This is something I wouldn’t even know to look for as a library.

rdiddly 8y ago

This is the most hilarious package. Can't wait to try it out!

Space_Lord_ 8y ago

Related, if you're looking for more information: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/2nagbb/i_created_rant_a_language_to_make_procedural_text/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/2nagbb/i_created_r... https://berkin.me/rant/ https://berkin.me/rant/

atemerev 8y ago

Nice! Let’s write some Twitter bots with that...

evacchi 8y ago

Reminds me of polygen (Italian) https://polygen.org/it/manuale https://polygen.org/it/manuale

porker 8y ago

I've looked for this and never found the right search term. Nice! Likewise, I can't identify the search terms to find a library for extracting data from a text corpus - e.g. to identify addresses, dates, names, phone numbers. Does one exist? I've smashed together a few regular expressions to brute-force it, but the accuracy is very low.

thom 8y ago
Loosely you're talking about named entity recognition/extraction (strictly you might not include addresses etc under this definition who but who cares). You might get some mileage out of tools like: https://nlp.stanford.edu/software/CRF-NER.shtml https://nlp.stanford.edu/software/CRF-NER.shtml
- najarvg 8y ago
  Stanford NER is very powerful. If you dont want to mess around with Java, there are also Python libraries that do this very effectively and easier to get started on (e.g. NLTK or Spacy). A high level intro for both with code snippets - https://towardsdatascience.com/named-entity-recognition-with-nltk-and-spacy-8c4a7d88e7da https://towardsdatascience.com/named-entity-recognition-with...

benj111 8y ago

I'm reading the replies here trying to ID the one generated by Rant.

PM_ME_YOUR_PUFZ 8y ago

I was bored of regular expressions anyway

onion-soup 8y ago

AAaaaaand it still looks like a machine code, not human readable code: [rs:10;\s]{[rn]. - what is this? ::&a> ?? what is a? what is $?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
TheBerkin 8y ago
Hi, most of this is shorthand for either several functions or functions with longer names. For example, [rs:10;\s] is the same as [rep:10][sep:\s]. The last example is used to synchronize results between dictionary queries. This particular one is short for "output the same word as any other query to this table with the match ID 'a'." In retrospect it was a poor decision to use shorthand forms in prominent example snippets, and I'll consider revising them.

abledon 8y ago

This would be a cool addon into a Unity C# game, easily spin up some procedural dialog by NPCs, have some rhyming characters, spit out some 'clues' in their rhymes then save those as text variables and store them in the environments puzzle as solution pieces. Kind of dehumanizing though for the game, like sucking out the soul.

Eli_P 8y ago
That's the way the heart of games like Event[0] or Façade works.

theandrewbailey 8y ago

I made a random sentence generator in Python about 10 years ago. It doesn't have any kind of pattern control (totally random), but it has different lists of nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc, and outputs grammatically correct sentences. I might steal some ideas from this, if I ever get around to working on it again.

appleflaxen 8y ago

this is a topic related to spintext, which is a technique for spam-filter avoidance.

hsndmoose 8y ago

Download link on website busted for me. Hugged to death? Getting BlobNotFound.

moopling 8y ago

I used this a while back when I was researching a way to help people with macular degeneration. I'd created some visual distortions which could be applied to a VR headset (if you had eye-tracking information) which I hoped would improve reading ability in MD patients. I used Rant to generate some random text in Unity and then measured how reading speed varied.

TheBerkin 8y ago
Rant dev here-- Wow! This has to be the most interesting use case I've heard of in a while.

mdaniel 8y ago

I was expecting to find a reference in the comments to Baba https://github.com/Lokaltog/baba-core#readme https://github.com/Lokaltog/baba-core#readme and its [in]famous example https://git-man-page-generator.lokaltog.net https://git-man-page-generator.lokaltog.net

moomin 8y ago

Funnily enough, there was a procedural text generation system in Cambridge (Phoenix) back in the day called... RANT. There was also one called TOAD which was more venerable and popular. Anyone posting word salad was inevitably accused of using TOAD’s output.

mmastrac 8y ago

This reminds me of an unrelated C program called "rant" from 30+ years ago: https://grack.com/code/legacy/rant/rant.c https://grack.com/code/legacy/rant/rant.c

dmix 8y ago

But, why?

kemitchell 8y ago

It's just a rabbit! > It has been refined to include a dizzying array of features... RUN AWAY!

mastrsushi 8y ago

Sounds like a fun personal project, but looks like another esoteric language no one will use.

IngoK 8y ago

This is really a fun library to play with! :) I've just written a little post about using Rant in Python if someone doesn't want to go into C#. https://kleiber.me/blog/2019/02/08/quick-tip-text-generation-rant-python/ https://kleiber.me/blog/2019/02/08/quick-tip-text-generation...

mboto 8y ago
Excellent post, I was looking for something in python.