Subject: Re: Feature Request - Grammar Checker
From: Dan Stromberg (strombrg@nis.acs.uci.edu)
Date: Wed Sep 12 2001 - 16:07:04 CDT
On Wed, Sep 12, 2001 at 11:29:54PM +0300, robin wrote:
> > One feature however which I find is lacking in a lot of
> > open-source wordprocessors but is very much needed is a grammar checker.
> > Being a writer, personally I consider this to be an invalueble feature
> > for editing purposes. If possible could you please include a grammar
> > checking in an upcoming version of Abiword.
>
> Please don't!
>
> Grammar checkers are at best irritating and at worst misleading. In the
> days when I used MS Word, I would sometimes turn on the grammar checker
> for amusement. Frequently it would mark sentences as ungrammatical which
> I was convinced were perfectly normal English. Given that I have a
> degree in English and an MA in linguistics, I'm fairly sure my knowledge
> of grammar can hold its own in a fight against a grammar checker.
It would almost certainly be an option, rather than a requirement, no?
There might be a place for some sort of plugin architecture.
I, for instance, think it'd be really cool if there were some sort of
module I could configure that would allow me to move my mouse over a
word and get a definition of it in another language via a tooltip, for
example. But most folks don't want that. So a plugin allows a number
of people to have such features without slowing down everyone else.
> Until we have genuine AI, grammar checkers will be unfeasible, for the
> simple reason that computers cannot guess a writer's intentions. For
> example, anyone reading this list will know that if I write (classic
> example) "Time flies like an arrow", the sentence doesn't have the same
> grammar as "Fruit flies like a banana". To a computer, they are
> syntactically identical.
I like "pretty little girls school". It's even better verbally than
in writing, because you can't tell if there's an apostrophe in
"girls". There are so many ways to parse that sentence fragment.
However, does a grammar checker need to check the semantics of a
sentence like "time flies like an arrow"? Or does it just need to
know that the sentence is ok grammatically with some permutation of
definitions of the words, and not all? I'd imagine a grammar checker
having no problem with "bark the airplane", because although it makes
no sense, the grammar checker is only looking at grammar (verb,
imperative form; indefinite article; noun) and not the meanings of the
words (semantics). It looks at "bark" the noun and throws it away,
because "bark" the verb works grammatically.
Now perhaps the Microsoft grammar checker defines grammar more
broadly. I don't think my automata (including formal language theory)
teacher would agree with such a thing, but I don't know; I haven't
used msword before. To an automatist, grammar is what you can check
with a grammar. Anything deeper is semantics. :)
> More to the point, the philosophy of Abiword, as I understand it, is to
> concentrate on the most necessary features and avoid bloat. Maybe when
> Abiword has essential features like tables, we can think about producing
> Abiword++ with grammar checkers, thesauri and the like.
I would agree that tables are more important than a grammar checker.
I wouldn't agree that adding lots of features necessarily means bloat,
as evidenced by the gimp.
> Robin
>
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-- Dan Stromberg UCI/NACS/DCS
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