I can see a text compression scheme coming up. Convert a string to a list of numbers, use a lookup table, done.
Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
181–190 of 230 posts
Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
#182I think this is a cool project. I appreciate that the creator has shared this with the world. I think its sad that people are (appear to be?) criticizing him simply for making it and sharing it. However....
"If you find yourself on the receiving end of a message that is too hard to figure out, do everyone a favor and insist on a simpler version.
Do _everyone_ a favor? Presumptive.
If I am on the receiving end of a message that is too hard for me to understand due to my ignorance of certain terms, or due to difficulties I have parsing grammatically correct writing, then the best way for me to do everyone a favor is to work on improving my own vocabulary and/or thinking ability.
Then I will be better equipped to communicate well with a larger set of the population, and better equipped to reason well. Improving your own thinking skills is good citizenship. Improving your ability to communicate well with a wider swath of the population can help you to build bridges between communities.
If I were instead to insist that the message achieves 'clarity' by accommodating my ignorance, then I may be helping some but certainly not everyone.
"Maybe one that only uses the 1,000 most common words."
Asking others to accommodate limitations to my vocabulary is likely to increase their cognitive load; most often I'd rather them apply themselves more fully to other tasks. I can just use a dictionary! Also, this runs the risk of resulting in text that is _harder_ to understand, if they trade precise terms for needlessly convoluted grammar.
Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
He speaks like a child, it works because his base is stupid and they relate. It's not a skill, he just isn't that bright.
If Trump honestly believed everything that he says, I would agree that his thinking would necessarily be shockingly _shallow_ on many issues.
But to compare him to a four year old then make a sweeping statement like "isn't that bright" ?
How could anyone think this? Isn't it obvious that there are domains in which he is, for better or worse, exceptionally intelligent within that domain?
Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trump bashing is lame. Trump has used words in his speeches that you probably couldn't define. I heard him casually use PROGNOSTICATION a couple weeks ago. He's not dumb. It's actually a sign of intelligence to use the simplest language necessary when expressing yourself to a broad audience (many with low education). People who use unnecessarily large words are usually doing it to try to sound smarter than they are a…
Ah yes, prognostication. Such a rare word that it's only uttered multiple times in one of the most popular Bill Murray movies made which is guaranteed to be on TV at least once a year. Seriously, that's not even nearly one of the best words.
Maybe you should start the Thesaurus Party and run in the next election. I'm sure voters would swiftly capitulate to the erudition of your insuperable sesquipedalian fulminations. None of those pathetic made-for-TV words that Trump has bedizened his 8th grader lexicon with.
Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
#185How about modifying it so one can choose to use the 1,000, or 2000, 5000, or 10,000 most common words, for instance? Should be pretty easy and done dynamically (although tuning the number _down_ would require more work).
Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah yes, prognostication. Such a rare word that it's only uttered multiple times in one of the most popular Bill Murray movies made which is guaranteed to be on TV at least once a year. Seriously, that's not even nearly one of the best words.
Maybe you should start the Thesaurus Party and run in the next election. I'm sure voters would swiftly capitulate to the erudition of your insuperable sesquipedalian fulminations. None of those pathetic made-for-TV words that Trump has bedizened his 8th grader lexicon with.
At what point does a word's existence become invalid? Searching for 'sesquipedalian' brings up pages upon pages of dictionary links on Google. Clearly this word exists only in dictionaries and is so rarely used as to be almost imaginary by those who use it. To put it another way, if it wasn't in the dictionary would it exist at all?
Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
#187Has no one mentioned Basic English yet?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English
Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
#188I guess it must ignore proper names, like Trump and Randall, detected by capitalization.
Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe you should start the Thesaurus Party and run in the next election. I'm sure voters would swiftly capitulate to the erudition of your insuperable sesquipedalian fulminations. None of those pathetic made-for-TV words that Trump has bedizened his 8th grader lexicon with.
At what point does a word's existence become invalid? Searching for 'sesquipedalian' brings up pages upon pages of dictionary links on Google. Clearly this word exists only in dictionaries and is so rarely used as to be almost imaginary by those who use it. To put it another way, if it wasn't in the dictionary would it exist at all?
Yes because an English dictionary is a historical record of how English speakers and writers use words and phrases making no judgement as to their 'correctness' or whether an audience of current English speakers would understand you were you to use them.
The purpose of a dictionary is to aid you in understanding the meaning any English speaker or writer is trying to convey independent of the time period or location, not to dictate valid and invalid words. Some words might be dropped from abridged dictionaries when they fall out of popularity but in 'The English Dictionary' (which doesn't really exist but is approximated by dictionaries like Oxford's) words are added but never removed.
This is different, than say, the mission of L'Académie française which is to act as a language regulator and maintain the official vocabulary and grammar of French.
Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe you should start the Thesaurus Party and run in the next election. I'm sure voters would swiftly capitulate to the erudition of your insuperable sesquipedalian fulminations. None of those pathetic made-for-TV words that Trump has bedizened his 8th grader lexicon with.
At what point does a word's existence become invalid? Searching for 'sesquipedalian' brings up pages upon pages of dictionary links on Google. Clearly this word exists only in dictionaries and is so rarely used as to be almost imaginary by those who use it. To put it another way, if it wasn't in the dictionary would it exist at all?
That's a good point. The makers of dictionaries have always sought catalogue language rather than create it. That's what Samuel Johnson set out to do. Without dictionaries we certainly would have lost a lot of words from our collective knowledge along the way.
Sesquiedalian seems to have been popping up since the 1600s.
http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/176752?redirectedFrom=sesquipe...