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January 2005 entries.

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January 26, 2005

Stephen on a not so big revolution

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...

Posted by Jean-Philippe on January 26, 2005 994 Comments, 10957 TrackBacks

January 02, 2005

Stereotyped or humorous dialect filters

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:

“MovableJive adds the following text filters:”

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 nameDescriptionAuthor
austroAustrian (Ahhhhnold)Tom van Nes
b1ffB1FF of Usenet yoreMatt Welsh, David Whitten
brooklynBrooklyn accentDaniel V Klein ('nyc.l')
chefSwedish Chef (from The Muppet Show)John Hagerman
cockneyLondoner accentStephen K Mulrine, Edward Betts ('ken.l'); unknown ('cockney.l'); extensive enhancements by Samuel Stoddard
drawlSouthern drawlAdam Hudd
dubyaGeorge "Dubya" Bushanonymous contribution
fuddElmer Fudd (from the Looney Tunes cartoons)unknown
funetakThick Asian accentEclipse Enterprises
jethroJethro from The Beverly HillbilliesDuane Paulson
jive1970's JiveDaniel V Klein, Clement Cole, with enhancements by Samuel Stoddard
krautGerman accentunknown
pansyEffeminate maleunknown
piratePirate talkOriginal Perl/PHP version by Douglas Gunters, with enhancements by Mark Lindner
postmodernPostmodernist talk ("Feminazi")unknown
redneckCountry redneckBrand Hilton
valspeakValley talkunknown
warezH4x0r codeIan Johnston, with enhancements by Mark Lindner
wrapWord-wrap filterMark 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:

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

Posted by Jean-Philippe on January 02, 2005 5 Comments, 1713 TrackBacks

Happy New Year with a bit of Computers History

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.”
(Via langreiter.com, 2004-12-18-650).

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

Posted by Jean-Philippe on January 02, 2005 1 Comments, 1285 TrackBacks

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