Notebook / Archives / January 2005

p. While doing researches about dynamic documents, I have found a little gem from a "talk":http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/talks/ given by "Stephen Wolfram":http://www.stephenwolfram.com/ about "Mathematica":http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/index.html in Chicago at the 1998 Worldwide //Mathematica// Conference:

bq. Version 3 was really big and included our whole new mechanism for dealing with notebook-interactive documents as symbolic expressions. I've seen some very, very nice things that people have done with that idea, and I'm sure I'll see more at the conference. /But it's another one of those big ideas - structure-programmable documents - that I think is going to take a while to really get absorbed./ (...)

Mathematica and Beyond: The Personal Story, Stephen Wolfram, Keynote address at the 1998 Worldwide Mathematica Conference, Chicago.

p. But I think that for such an important concept, the documentation is a bit light ;-):
!http://www.stignergy.net/ideastream/entries/00003/Mathematica_Structure-Programmable_Documents.jpg!

p. Searching a bit more, helped by words from the //Notebook Interface// section of the "//Some New Features of Mathematica 3.0//":http://documents.wolfram.com/v3/MainBook/0.3.1.html section from the "//Mathematica 3 Documentation//":http://documents.wolfram.com/v3/, I have found the document "//Mathematica Integrated Publishing Solution//":http://documents.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/benefits/integrated.html, section //Programmable structured documents//:

bq. Like any other //Mathematica// object, notebooks are //Mathematica// expressions that can be dynamically generated, rewritten, and modified programmatically. Reformatting and even creation of notebooks can be done by a //Mathematica// program. This and other features such as tools for symbolic XML manipulation make //Mathematica// a very flexible and powerful tool for dealing with structured electronic documents. Furthermore, Mathematica notebooks can be exported in a wide variety of formats, including web standards such as XML, XHTML, HTML, and MathML 2.0, as well as TeX and LaTeX for traditional technical publishing.

p. Nothing new in fact. Too early awakened enthusiasm...

While preparing my entry about styling languages, I re-discovered many dialect translators. For example, if you want plugins for your weblog, you can easily get:

• For MovableType: MovableJive.
• For WordPress: the Text Filter Suite Plugin for WordPress (story in the entry Fun Filters, examples accessible from the entry Back to being a land lubber on Dougal Campbell Presents Geek Ramblings).

“MovableJive adds the following text filters:”

• “Jive English” or Ebonics [Wikipedia];
• “Texas Drawl” or Southern American English [Wikipedia];
• “Cokney English” [Wikipedia] (more theorical introduction Web documents relating to Estuary English on the Departement of Phonetics & Linguistics's website of UCL;
• “Swedish Chef” from the Muppet Show [Wikipedia];
• “Valley Girl” [Wikipedia];
• “German Accent”;
• “Hunting Wabbits” or Elmer Fudd from Looney Tunes [Wikipedia].

The Text Filter Suite Plugin for WordPress supports the Pirate way of talking.

If you want more dialects, GNU Talk Filters is a complete package of filter programs “that convert ordinary English text into text that mimics a stereotyped or otherwise humorous dialect”. The Talk Filters are numerous:

Filter name	Description	Author
austro	Austrian (Ahhhhnold)	Tom van Nes
b1ff	B1FF of Usenet yore	Matt Welsh, David Whitten
brooklyn	Brooklyn accent	Daniel V Klein ('nyc.l')
chef	Swedish Chef (from The Muppet Show)	John Hagerman
cockney	Londoner accent	Stephen K Mulrine, Edward Betts ('ken.l'); unknown ('cockney.l'); extensive enhancements by Samuel Stoddard
drawl	Southern drawl	Adam Hudd
dubya	George "Dubya" Bush	anonymous contribution
fudd	Elmer Fudd (from the Looney Tunes cartoons)	unknown
funetak	Thick Asian accent	Eclipse Enterprises
jethro	Jethro from The Beverly Hillbillies	Duane Paulson
jive	1970's Jive	Daniel V Klein, Clement Cole, with enhancements by Samuel Stoddard
kraut	German accent	unknown
pansy	Effeminate male	unknown
pirate	Pirate talk	Original Perl/PHP version by Douglas Gunters, with enhancements by Mark Lindner
postmodern	Postmodernist talk ("Feminazi")	unknown
redneck	Country redneck	Brand Hilton
valspeak	Valley talk	unknown
warez	H4x0r code	Ian Johnston, with enhancements by Mark Lindner
wrap	Word-wrap filter	Mark Lindner
Note from Jean-Philippe: the wrap filter is not a dialect filter.
The filters were repackaged, integrated, optimized, and documented by Mark Lindner.

To know more about the authors of these filters, have a look at the copyright file (from the filters Debian package).

A few websites doing translation from english to dialects:

• The Dialectizer;
• Language Llama Web Translator.

Another kind of dictionaries on The Complete Newspeak Dictionary, more politicaly inclined:

• 1984 - Newspeak Dictionary;
• Modern Newspeak Dictionary – “A guide to politically correct speech”.

Happy New Year!

To start this promising year, I would like to mention the availability of the paper Computer Programming as an Art from Donald E. Knuth, author of The Art of Computer Programming, written for the 1974 A.M. Turing Award Lecture of the ACM:

“For his major contributions to the analysis of algorithms and the design of programming languages, and in particular for his contributions to the “art of computer programming” through his well-known books in a continuous series by this title.”

Also have a look at Modern Home Computer from Mitch Kapor.