Text Filter

[mac at uvacs.UUCP]

.TH BLITHER nil UVa
.SH NAME
blither - generate locally coherent text
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B blither
[ \-match
.I matchdist
] [ \-length
.I replymax
] [ \-sequence ] [ \-db ]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.PP
Fifth-generation software has made it possible to generate new knowledge
from old.
.PP
The program
.I blither
copies sentences from standard input to standard output,
scrambling them by
splicing different sentences together at common subsequences.
This is very similar to the random
text generation described
in
.I "Scientific American"
Computer Recreations of November 1983.
In this case, however, the units are words instead of characters.
The
.I \-match
argument can be used to set the required length of common subsequences.
.PP
Program parameters are:
.TP
.B \-match
changes the order of coherence of the sentences.
The default
.I matchdist=1.
.TP
.B \-length
changes the maximum length of generated sentences.
When a word is repeated in a sentence (e.g. Quack! Quack!) the
sentence generator can get stuck in a loop.  This
maximum gets it out.  Default
.I replymax=20.
.TP
.B \-sequence
makes each sentence output start from the corresponding input sentence.
Otherwise the output sentence is chosen from the set of previous input.
This option speeds up the program on large texts.
.TP
.B \-db
intersperses garbage collector statistics & other nonsense.
.SH EXAMPLES
deroff th | blither -match 3 | nroff -me | page
.SH BUGS
"I'm better now! Quack! Quack! Quack! Quack! Quack! Quack! Quack!..."
.PP
Understanding of punctuation is weak.
.PP
Random number generator is not seeded.
.SH AUTHORS
.nf
Tim Stryker
Jeff Dalton
Alex Colvin