Aucbvax.2427
fa.works
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!works
Fri Jul 24 00:54:08 1981
What is Writer's Workbench?
>From TRB@MIT-MC Fri Jul 24 00:52:49 1981
Writer's Workbench was originally a few elegant programs which
were written by L L Cherry at BTL Murray Hill. The original one,
probably the one of most interest to hackers, parses English text
and identifies parts of speech by looking for relations between
the words. This parts program is the basis for several others.
One program uses the output of the parts program to classify
each sentence type as simple, complex, compound, or compound
complex. This style program also collects statistics on
document "readability." There is a topic program which uses
the parts program to generate frequent nouns for keyword
indexing (not a real good idea, in my opinion) and a program
whose purpose it is to easily find split infinitives.
Other programs include one that looks for for excessive use
of passive voice, one that counts average number of syllables
in a word (this program uses English spelling rules, rather
than a dictionary; the readability program needs this info),
a program which lets you check your organization by printing
out the first and last sentences of each paragraph, a spelling
corrector, a double word finder, a bad idiom finder, a punc-
tuation corrector, a program that breaks your text into phrases,
and a bunch of little programs that just print out examples.
Writer's Workbench has been recently covered by the mass media.
The reporters always seem to give a ridiculous impression of
it, stressing the fact, for instance, that it has a program
which identifies your use of sexist language. (Now there's
a justification for computer science, huh?) The mass media,
and therefore the public, do not seem to see the line between
computer systems as tools and computer systems as replacements
for humans. (Writer's Workbench flags possible errors, it does
not rewrite your document.) I believe that this ignorance is
a major stumbling block to the acceptance of the computer
revolution.
Writer's Workbench would have a field day with this message.
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