There is a web version of this which I made a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11424197
Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
51–60 of 230 posts
Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
#52To make it simple, you would need to use <=1000 words _and_ avoid phrasal verbs. Otherwise it is a kind of cheating (at least, in English).
Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
#53Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
#54Would love a slider that would allow you to adjust the words allowed from 500 most common words in English to 10k most common words. Also, it would be great if you could compile a windows version.
Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
#55A similar editor was made for the book Thing Explainer[1] by Randal Munroe from XKCD. A book that explains all kinds of different things, from space shuttles to microwaves using the top 1000 common English words. [1] https://xkcd.com/thing-explainer/
Yeah it's called "thing explainer", but it's more like a "thing convoluter". It's a work humour, not a book of science.
Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could be handy for non native English speakers though - less to learn.
I seriously doubt it, who wants to sound like a very stupid child? This is more of an XKCD fan boy project. So let's look at a famous XKCD comic using this, "US Space Team's Up Goer Five". "US Space Team" barely makes sense, does more to obscure than illuminate, and "Up Goer Five" makes no sense at all.
"stupid" = depends on the age.
Unless you meant all children are stupid....
Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
#57Would love a slider that would allow you to adjust the words allowed from 500 most common words in English to 10k most common words. Also, it would be great if you could compile a windows version.
+1 on the slider, you/we should really do that
Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
#58While this is probably a joke, I would note that a person is rarely writing for consumption by all demographics. Vampire novels, comic books, chemistry textbooks, all have their audiences, and it is naive to say "but one day the whole world may wish to read my book, I must open the gates as wide as possible", because accessibility is not a free.
Don't simplify or complicate your language without reason.
Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
#59Am I the only one to find that using only the 1,000 most common words actually makes thing harder to understand? The writer ends up having to use convoluted paraphrases to refer to things where a precise, well defined and well understood word exists but it's not part of the top 1,000.
The technique is working quite well for Donald Trump: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/15/ho... > Some of his answers last only a few seconds, some are slightly longer, but almost all consist of simple sentences, grammatically and conceptually, and most of them withhold their most important word or phrase until the very end. Trump’s sentences end with a pop, and he seems to know instinctively wh…
Sounds tremendous!
Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
#60A while back a friend wrote an Android app for this:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fallinghaw...