Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vale.sh – A Linter for Prose

vale.sh

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 89 posts

Re: Vale.sh – A Linter for Prose

#11

Post by zerojames »

I saw Vale earlier today. The tool helps you comply with technical style guides like those by Microsoft and Google, and the out-of-the-box Vale rules (the extent of the Vale rules I am unsure; I got way more suggestions when installing the Microsoft and Google extensions).

A few notes while getting it set up for macOS:

    1. brew install vale
    2. Create .vale.ini (in root dir, I think)
    3. A minimal setup that lets you lint with Microsoft and Google style guides:

        MinAlertLevel = suggestion
        StylesPath = styles

        Packages = Google, Microsoft

        [*]
        BasedOnStyles = Vale,  Google, Microsoft

    4. Run `vale sync` to install the Google and Microsoft style guide extensions.
    5. Run 'vale {file}.md` to run the linter.

Re: Vale.sh – A Linter for Prose

#12

Post by hhh »

jasonjmcghee wrote: post #9

As there's a theme in comments here - I'm surprised people are so confused by the landing page. Between "a linter for prose" and the screenshot at the top of the page, I found it quite clear what the use case and point of the tool was. Personally interested where the confusion is- maybe unfamiliarity with "linting" or "prose"?

I found it clear when I looked at the site, but never thought about prose being used in this way. I didn't know the actual definition though, and after googling it's clear.

Re: Vale.sh – A Linter for Prose

#14

Post by LucasOe »

I always struggle with keeping my writing clear and concise, maybe because English isn't my native tongue, so this looks like an incredibly helpful tool to me. Does Vale.sh have the ability to check the prose used in comments? Using this for doc comments would be useful for writing better documentation. The example only shows it being used for markdown files.

Re: Vale.sh – A Linter for Prose

#15

Post by mhitza »

Very interesting! Just the other day I've tried proselint for the first time, and became annoyed that I'd have to hack something together to only have it lint over the text in my markdown file. It doesn't ignore code blocks, as it just supports text, as is not aware of any file format.

Vale seems to do this out of the box, which is great, but the suggestion I get, while better than nothing, are still very rudimentary compared to Grammarly[1] (which I haven't used for at least a year at this point).

For example, I've enabled all styles. The alex and write-good ones gave actionable suggestions. Readability however had suggestions of the form "Try to keep the Automated Readability Index (8.83) below 8.", "Try to keep the SMOG grade (11.35) below 10.", "Try to keep the Coleman–Liau Index grade (9.57) below 9". If I knew what that was maybe I could improve my score. Is there another FLOSS tool that can turn those in actionable steps?

[1] And LanguageTool, even if sometimes advertised by FLOSS folk as a Grammarly alternative, it really isn't. Every time I try it, I feel disappointed. Has anyone tried their premium option to see if it's better?

Re: Vale.sh – A Linter for Prose

#16

Post by dmarchand90 »

jasonjmcghee wrote: post #9

As there's a theme in comments here - I'm surprised people are so confused by the landing page. Between "a linter for prose" and the screenshot at the top of the page, I found it quite clear what the use case and point of the tool was. Personally interested where the confusion is- maybe unfamiliarity with "linting" or "prose"?

I think it's the lack of examples. Also, because this is very cutting edge, I'd like to know a bit of the technology behind it to know the strengths and limits. E.g. is it based on hard Coded grammar and thus a bit stiff and dumb? Or is it llm based and therefore with data control issues?

It would also be nice to see examples of what it can do. Again, if it's hard Coded grammar it would be nice to see the complexity it can handle, if llm, the lengths the token limits can manage

Re: Vale.sh – A Linter for Prose

#17

Post by skydhash »

mhitza wrote: post #15

Very interesting! Just the other day I've tried proselint for the first time, and became annoyed that I'd have to hack something together to only have it lint over the text in my markdown file. It doesn't ignore code blocks, as it just supports text, as is not aware of any file format. Vale seems to do this out of the box, which is great, but the suggestion I get, while better than nothing, are still very rudimentary…

I have the premium option and it’s nice. I use it primarily as a spellchecking tool. And it sometimes detect when I use the wrong style (English is my third language).
Post reply on HN