4 ms·

If it behaves the way it's described, it sounds remarkably useful. It sounds like the syntax highlighting that every half-decent IDE and programmer's editor ha

If it behaves the way it's described, it sounds remarkably useful. It sounds like the syntax highlighting that every half-decent IDE and programmer's editor has had since forever. Which is odd, since there's no way that should take 4 years to implement.

twoodfin 13y ago
Except this isn't a programming editor, and I've never seen one of those that uses dimming aggressively on all but a single syntactic unit. Maybe one exists. Screenshots welcome. And this is assuming I understand the feature correctly.
- alok-g 13y ago
  Unless the said invention carefully distinguishes a programming editor and a human language editor, the invention may still overlap on grounds of novelty. If the said invention does carefully distinguishes the two, the invention would still be questionable on grounds of obviousness unless it explains the key difficulties involved in migrating from programming languages to human languages and the invention claims a solution to that problem. I think the latter is unlikely. Note: IANAL, and haven't read the claims of the said invention.
wodenokoto 13y ago
You obvious know next to nothing about English syntax. Have you never wondered why you can learn python in a day or two, but not English or Chinese? First of, you need a huge dictionary of all words and rules for their conjugations. Then you need a huge rule set for bound morphemes. Which adjectives can you add 'ly' to in order to make them adverbs? There are literally hundreds if not thousands of bound morphemes and they can sometimes only be applied to certain words within certain word-classes. Then you need a huge rule set for when each word acts as a specific word class (is bank a noun or a verb? Is anime a noun or an adjective? Is like a verb or preposition? You know, "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana", actually like can behave like several wordclasses) These are not solved problems yet, but we are getting very good at them now. We weren't 4 years ago. Failing that, you could also take and annotate word classes in thousands of pages of text, and then use a machine algorithm to apply similar annotations in the the text entered into the program. Unless you are expecting people to write articles for the Wall Street Journal, this might not be such a good route either.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >You obvious know next to nothing about English syntax. Have you never wondered why you can learn python in a day or two, but not English or Chinese? And you obviously know next to nothing about how this is implemented in Writer Pro. We're not talking about AI-level intelligent understanding of english here (which not even MS Word has in its syntax check). We're talking about a ho-hum, "this word is a noun, this is verb" etc kind of tagging, which just needs some metadata (you can even scrap off of an online dictionary).
  - function_seven 13y ago
    There is some context-awareness required, though. Verbs can almost always function as nouns, too. To determine which requires some reasoning about the sentence a word appears in. "Drive to the store." vs. "I'm going for a drive." "Don't punch Judy!" vs. "I gave Judy some punch." You're right, though. It's not AI-level intelligence required for this.
    - coldtea 13y ago
      >There is some context-awareness required, though. Verbs can almost always function as nouns, too. Absolutely. And Writer Pro breaks down completely at such distinctions. Some words are always marked as verbs and others as nouns, context be damned.
- plorkyeran 13y ago
  They're just using NSLinguisticTagger. Correctly lexing English is harder than lexing a programming language, but that's hardly relevant when there's a pre-existing library to do it for you.

twoodfin 13y ago

Except this isn't a programming editor, and I've never seen one of those that uses dimming aggressively on all but a single syntactic unit. Maybe one exists. Screenshots welcome. And this is assuming I understand the feature correctly.

alok-g 13y ago
Unless the said invention carefully distinguishes a programming editor and a human language editor, the invention may still overlap on grounds of novelty. If the said invention does carefully distinguishes the two, the invention would still be questionable on grounds of obviousness unless it explains the key difficulties involved in migrating from programming languages to human languages and the invention claims a solution to that problem. I think the latter is unlikely. Note: IANAL, and haven't read the claims of the said invention.

wodenokoto 13y ago

You obvious know next to nothing about English syntax. Have you never wondered why you can learn python in a day or two, but not English or Chinese? First of, you need a huge dictionary of all words and rules for their conjugations. Then you need a huge rule set for bound morphemes. Which adjectives can you add 'ly' to in order to make them adverbs? There are literally hundreds if not thousands of bound morphemes and they can sometimes only be applied to certain words within certain word-classes. Then you need a huge rule set for when each word acts as a specific word class (is bank a noun or a verb? Is anime a noun or an adjective? Is like a verb or preposition? You know, "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana", actually like can behave like several wordclasses) These are not solved problems yet, but we are getting very good at them now. We weren't 4 years ago. Failing that, you could also take and annotate word classes in thousands of pages of text, and then use a machine algorithm to apply similar annotations in the the text entered into the program. Unless you are expecting people to write articles for the Wall Street Journal, this might not be such a good route either.

coldtea 13y ago
>You obvious know next to nothing about English syntax. Have you never wondered why you can learn python in a day or two, but not English or Chinese? And you obviously know next to nothing about how this is implemented in Writer Pro. We're not talking about AI-level intelligent understanding of english here (which not even MS Word has in its syntax check). We're talking about a ho-hum, "this word is a noun, this is verb" etc kind of tagging, which just needs some metadata (you can even scrap off of an online dictionary).
- function_seven 13y ago
  There is some context-awareness required, though. Verbs can almost always function as nouns, too. To determine which requires some reasoning about the sentence a word appears in. "Drive to the store." vs. "I'm going for a drive." "Don't punch Judy!" vs. "I gave Judy some punch." You're right, though. It's not AI-level intelligence required for this.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    >There is some context-awareness required, though. Verbs can almost always function as nouns, too. Absolutely. And Writer Pro breaks down completely at such distinctions. Some words are always marked as verbs and others as nouns, context be damned.
plorkyeran 13y ago
They're just using NSLinguisticTagger. Correctly lexing English is harder than lexing a programming language, but that's hardly relevant when there's a pre-existing library to do it for you.