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Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

refine.sh

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Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

#131

Post by limagnolia »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #50
cjs_ac wrote: post #25

The screenshot shows the (corrected) example sentence: > Sometimes I still make mistakes with articles and prepositions, but my grammar is getting better every day I practice. In American/Simplified English, this is grammatically correct. However, in 'full fat' English, practice is a noun, whereas practise is a verb; e.g. : > I go to my practice to practise medicine. The problem I have with this website is that it's…

So apparently the tool is slanted toward American English where the non-word practise is properly treated as a spelling error like colour . If you use these words in writing for Americans and you are not a citizen of the British Commonwealth, you instantly mark yourself as arrogant.

It gives off arrogant vibes to have one accuse Americans of being arrogant for using alternative spellings.

Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

#132

Post by apaprocki »

dkga wrote: post #61
beAbU wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and you are not a citizen of the British Commonwealth What do you regard as the British Commonwealth, and what variant of English spelling to you expect people to use who are not part of this grouping? Just so that you know, in case you don't, "US English" is used just about exclusively in the US, and UK English is used in most of the rest of the world, despite the fact that most of our devices incorrectly default…

I work at an international organisation, and can confirm. My understanding is that is that at the international level, only the US-based international organisations use US English. To be sure, I don‘t have any dog in this fight, just highlighting a fact from my experience that many here might not know.

My experience with a large multi-thousand Eng department where the majority are in the US or UK: US-based or influenced employees will write usually with American English spellings and continue to do so even if based in the UK. UK-based or influenced employees will write with British English spellings and continue to do so if based in the US. No one conforms to the other and everyone can understand each other perfectly fine because the spelling of these words does not matter for comprehension. This applies to writing as well as words in code or API names.

Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

#133

Post by Someone1234 »

Deukhoofd wrote: post #8

Does anyone know how this compares to other products in its field, such as LanguageTool and Harper? LanguageTool can be hosted locally, and Harper runs entirely as an extension, so I'm interested in how the spelling and grammar checks compare.

I've run LanguageTool Server with the ngrams[0] for years, it is legitimately excellent with the ngrams (and mediocre without). The English-only ngrams are roughly 15 GB on disk.

Just have a Windows Scheduled Task kick off this bat file:

     SET PATH=SET PATH=C:\program files\Amazon Corretto\jdk17.0.15_6\bin\
     start javaw -cp languagetool-server.jar org.languagetool.server.HTTPServer --port 8081 --allow-origin "*" -l en-US --languageModel "C:\LanguageTool\LanguageTool-6.3\ngram"
[0] https://dev.languagetool.org/finding-errors-using-n-gram-dat...

Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

#134

Post by xd1936 »

ho_schi wrote: post #120
gardnr wrote: post #34

You can use a local instance of LanguageTool in a docker container for this: https://github.com/gardner/LocalLanguageTool

There is also a readily installable Flatpak: https://github.com/sonnyp/Eloquent It is restricted by Flatpak (i.e. Control Groups and Namespaces): * No file-system access * No access to devices * Network Access is allowed (API of Languagetool is only reachable via REST?) It is fat. But that's more an issue of Java itself. I only wish Languagetool didn't use Java, which is fine on a servers but horrible on personal-com…

TIL LibreOffice has finally removed Java. Thanks for educating me.

Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

#135

Post by nakovet »

Minor thing with the website but the download button is not entirely clickable, if you don't click on the text you don't get to download it, due to the div > a and the anchor being just the text, consider styling the anchor to have the padding so the whole thing is clickable. :)

Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

#136

Post by menaerus »

cjs_ac wrote: post #36
Normal_gaussian wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets be fair here, this tool is new - the domain was registered on Saturday. What you suggest does seem like a good early doors feature; but the cut they've made seems to be the right one to prove market potential.

It's fine if the tool has severe limitations at this stage. However, it's crucial to clearly state what those limitations are: not only does it prevent the flurry of complaints and chargebacks from customers who were disappointed that their specific case is unsupported, but it's also an opportunity to introduce a 'we're on this journey together' aspect that helps to make customers emotionally invested in the product.

Severe limitations? You sound like an a*hole tbf. The tool clearly provides the value, and it's a magnificent display how something like a simple LLM can be used to make your everyday life easier without compromising other minor stuff, you know, like letting other companies make profits by selling your own data?

Perhaps you live under a rock, I don't really know, but it maybe just happens that you're not a target audience? There's for sure many folks, and even more so companies, who will value their own privacy more over practice vs practise bikeshedding.

Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

#137

Post by aaronbaugher »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #130
raincole wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I use correct punctuation marks my work will be more likely to be \detected\ as AI written; The risk just isn"t worth it so I never do that^

We'll soon need a writing tool that introduces spelling and grammar errors into our text and messes with punctuation so that we aren't accused of using LLMs.

It's funny how many people still think sloppy, mistake-filled writing is a sign of AI, as if their writing is at the same level as the image generators giving people six fingers, when the truth is the current LLMs use better English grammar than 99% of humans. Their writing may be kind of boring and standard, but they don't confuse "their" and "there."

Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

#138

Post by dymk »

cjs_ac wrote: post #123
rafram wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Describing American English as “simplified” English is textbook bad linguistics. It’s a different dialect, not an inherently simpler or more complex one.

It's an old meme: https://imgur.com/thats-bit-harsh-steam-XCEdD8W In the UK, it's considered good form to be humorous when making an argument; I gather that in the US, you're supposed to sound like you're making a speech to prepare troops for war. I apologise if, in the course of describing how a product is unsuitable for use in my culture, I made that argument according to the norms of my culture.

Banter (Traditional)

Banter (Simplified)

Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

#139

Post by speedgoose »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #50
cjs_ac wrote: post #25

The screenshot shows the (corrected) example sentence: > Sometimes I still make mistakes with articles and prepositions, but my grammar is getting better every day I practice. In American/Simplified English, this is grammatically correct. However, in 'full fat' English, practice is a noun, whereas practise is a verb; e.g. : > I go to my practice to practise medicine. The problem I have with this website is that it's…

So apparently the tool is slanted toward American English where the non-word practise is properly treated as a spelling error like colour . If you use these words in writing for Americans and you are not a citizen of the British Commonwealth, you instantly mark yourself as arrogant.

As a Frenchman, I enjoy writing colour and being arrogant.

Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

#140

Post by TeMPOraL »

naniwaduni wrote: post #128
TeMPOraL wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds surprising. As an European, I thought that UK only thinks their English is the dominant one, because it's the one officially taught everywhere. Meanwhile, the reality is, people learn English primarily from Hollywood and MTV; music, video, television and computer games are both the primary exposure and the main reason for people to pick English up, and they're almost all in US English. Secondarily, comput…

The kind of organization that identifies as an "international organization" is disproportionately likely to be hyperaware of its working language choice and standardize on a particular English dialect by policy and pick en-gb. Without such a conscious choice, yes, Americanisms do seem a fair bit more globally pervasive and easy to fall into "by accident".

I'm assuming we're talking NGOs here, because if we expand "organization" to include for-profit entities, then I'd argue vast majority of them will not just be US-English speaking, but US-originating and US-headquatered.

> Without such a conscious choice, yes, Americanisms do seem a fair bit more globally pervasive and easy to fall into "by accident".

You'd need choice and enforcement - unless such organization is testing for Received Pronunciation during interviews and filtering out people who cannot into Queen's English[0], I'd wager most of the members in such org, who don't come from UK (or a few related countries), will be speaking "British English" with distinctly US pronunciation. Because while an organization can make a conscious choice here, for most people, learning a second language is a long-term endeavor that largely happens "in the background", and it's very easy to learn a blend, with UK English being present in schools, and US English everywhere else.

--

[0] - Or is it King's English now?

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