RedPen, a Document Checker

Takahiko Ito

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Background: programming environment

Software engineers make use of many tools in the development of software.

Tool: CheckStyle, FindBugs, lint, Valgrind, CI etc…

➔ Tools contribute to keep the quality.

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Background: writing situations

Software engineers write large amount of natural language documents

Example: Manuals, tutorial, Blog, Specification

Unfortunately, there is no handy checking tool for the quality of documents.

➔ Quality of documents is not improved.3

MotivationChecking formatting issues can be done automatically.

Writers can concentrate on the contents of documents.

➔We have made RedPen, a document checker.

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What is RedPen?a validation tool for document written in natural languages

E.g., English, Japanese, Chinese

Target: technical papers, manuals and so on.

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Function of RedPenRedPen detects the problems in input documents.

Problems:

Sentence Length

Inconsistency of terminology

Spell-miss

…

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Example: low quality text

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Some of software works in more than one machines and such distributed software can handle large amount of data or works in severe environments because such software make use of much computer resources. In this paper we call a server works in a cluster as ‘instance.’ for example, in search engines or distributed databases, the fractions of indexes are stored in multiple instances.Such system need a component to merge the query results before the return the results to the users.

Too long sentence!small letter!

Need space!

Features of RedPenHandy configuration

Language independent

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Usage: RedPenUsers pick up the checking items (validators)

RedPen provides many validators

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Example of RedPen configuration

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<validator-list> <validator name=“SentenceLength" /> <validator name="InvalidCharacter" /> <validator name=“SpellCheck" /> 　<validator name=“SectionLength” /> </validator-list>

Sentence length

Invalid character

spell check

Available validatorsSentenceLength InvalidExpression SpaceAfterPeriod CommaNumber WordNumber SuggestExpression InvalidCharacter SpaceWithSymbol KatakanaEndHyphen KatakanaSpellCheck SectionLength ParagraphNumber ParagraphStartWith

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CommandRedPen provides a simple command.

!

Supported format: Markdown、Textile、PlainText

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$ redpen -c config-file input

Sample serverLaunched by the following command.

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$ java -jar redpen.war

Demo

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Future workCurrent RedPen focuses on the simple functions

In the future, RedPen will support more sophisticated and experimental functions proposed in research fields.

Provide plugin system

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SummaryIntroduction of RedPen

Validation tool for documents written in natural languages.

Usage:

Configurations

Handy command and server

Future work

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