Re: Software for Poets (Was: Re: Text-to-speech)
This is about poetry. I think the next reply should be done privately unless someone else is interested in it. Hi, Le dimanche 20 Mars 2005 23:04, Paul Rubin a écrit : > Francis Girard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > 4- Propose a synonym that will fit in a verse, i.e. with the right amount > > of syllabs > > > > 5- Suggest a missing word or expression in a verse by applying the > > Shannon text generation principle > > ... > > First, do you think it may be a useful tool ? > > What other features you think can make it usefull for a poet ? > > I'm skeptical of this notion. You can think of writing a poem as > building up a tree structure where there's a root idea you're trying > to express, "branches" in the choices of images/comparisons/etc. that > you use to express the idea, and "leaves" that are the actual words in > the poem. Rhyme means that a left-to-right traversal of the leaves > (i.e. reading the words) results in a pattern with a certain > structure. You're proposing a tool that helps explore the search > space in the nodes near the bottom level of the tree, to find words > with the right characteristics. > > I think the constraint of rhyme and meter is best served by widening > the search space at the upper levels of the tree and not the lower > levels. That is, if you've got an image and you don't find rhyming > words for it with easy natural diction, a computerized search for more > and more obscure words to express that image in rhyme is the last > thing you want. Absolutly right. > Rather, you want to discard the image and choose a > different one to express the idea. That means seeking more images by > mentally revisiting and staying inside the emotion at the center of > poem, a much more difficult thing to do than solving the mere math > problem of finding a string of rhyming words with similar semantics to > a non-rhyming sequence that you already have. Again, right. Your description comes very close to my own experience of writing poems and I never read something as clear as what I'm reading here. Poetry practice is described most of the time in poetic terms just like religion is described in religious terms. And one has to impregnate himself with these words to, little by little, gain some understanding of it. Your description proves that it is possible to describe it otherwise. I am truly marvelled. The question is : how do you discard the image to choose another one ? How this process takes place ? I observed myself while writing a poem (I, myself, may not be good example since I am certainly not a good poet) and discovered that it is while playing with the words, trying to find the right one, with the right number of syllabs, that I discover a new image, and re-write the whole verse, even re-arranging the whole strophe or poem. My goal with the two last tasks (4 and 5) was to help the poor guy struggling with the words, not to produce the correct final verse, but only to help him in one of the phase of his writing. > But when you find the > right image, the words and rhythm fall into place without additional > effort. > I don't believe much in this. Poetry and writing in general is work, work, work and more work. > This is why writing good poems is hard, and is also why the results of > doing it well is powerful. I don't think it can be programmed into a > computer using any current notions. Again right. My goal, of course, is not to substitute the poet by a computer. Only help him in some of his mechanical tasks. Regards Francis Girard -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Software for Poets (Was: Re: Text-to-speech)
Francis Girard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > 4- Propose a synonym that will fit in a verse, i.e. with the right amount of > syllabs > > 5- Suggest a missing word or expression in a verse by applying the Shannon > text generation principle > ... > First, do you think it may be a useful tool ? > What other features you think can make it usefull for a poet ? I'm skeptical of this notion. You can think of writing a poem as building up a tree structure where there's a root idea you're trying to express, "branches" in the choices of images/comparisons/etc. that you use to express the idea, and "leaves" that are the actual words in the poem. Rhyme means that a left-to-right traversal of the leaves (i.e. reading the words) results in a pattern with a certain structure. You're proposing a tool that helps explore the search space in the nodes near the bottom level of the tree, to find words with the right characteristics. I think the constraint of rhyme and meter is best served by widening the search space at the upper levels of the tree and not the lower levels. That is, if you've got an image and you don't find rhyming words for it with easy natural diction, a computerized search for more and more obscure words to express that image in rhyme is the last thing you want. Rather, you want to discard the image and choose a different one to express the idea. That means seeking more images by mentally revisiting and staying inside the emotion at the center of poem, a much more difficult thing to do than solving the mere math problem of finding a string of rhyming words with similar semantics to a non-rhyming sequence that you already have. But when you find the right image, the words and rhythm fall into place without additional effort. This is why writing good poems is hard, and is also why the results of doing it well is powerful. I don't think it can be programmed into a computer using any current notions. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Software for Poets (Was: Re: Text-to-speech)
On Mar 20, 2005, at 4:10 PM, Francis Girard wrote:
Hello M. Hartman,
It's a very big opportunity for me to find someone that both is a poet
and
knows something about programming.
First, please excuse my bad english ; I'm a french canadian.
My French is a great deal worse than your English; fear not.
I am dreaming to write a software to help french poets to write strict
rigourous classical poetry. Since calssical poetry is somewhat
mathematical,
a lot of tasks can be automatised :
1- Counting the number of syllabs ("pied" in french) in a verse
2- Checking the rimes ; determining the strength of a rime
3- Checking compliance of a poem to a fixed pre-determined classical
form (in
french, we have distique, tercet, quatrain, quintain, sixain, huitain,
dizain, triolet, vilanelle, rondeau, rondel, ballade, chant royal,
sonnet,
etc.)
4- Propose a synonym that will fit in a verse, i.e. with the right
amount of
syllabs
5- Suggest a missing word or expression in a verse by applying the
Shannon
text generation principle
First, do you think it may be a useful tool ?
That is a very deep question. (See below.)
What other features you think can make it usefull for a poet ?
The first task of cutting sentences into syllabs (phonetically of
course, not
typographically) is already done. It's been difficult to get it right
and to
make it guess correctly with a very very high percentage.
I can very well imagine that the next task is even more difficult. I
need to
translate text into phonems. Do you know some software that does it ?
I guess
that voice synthetisers that translates written text into spoken text
must
first translate the text into phonems. Right ? Do you know if there
some way
that I can re-use some sub-modules from these projects that will
translate
text into phonems ?
The problems are hard ones. Getting reliable syllable divisions is, all
by itself, a heart-breaker in English; I'm not sure whether harder or
easier in French. (See the module syllables.py in the source code to my
Scandroid program at the site listed below.)
Rhyme is harder -- I haven't yet tried it in English -- precisely
because text-to-phoneme is very hard.
I haven't really worked with this, that is, with the sounds of speech
(though I'm a musician as well as a poet), mostly because it's
difficult. The projects in my *Virtual Muse: Experiments in Computer
Poetry"[1], for example, deal almost entirely with language as a
typographical phenomenon. So does my Scandroid, even though the
material it's working with is all aimed at and motivated by the
auditory qualities of poetry.
I do imagine you're right that the text-to-speech people have worked
out a lot of this. The trouble is that so far I haven't seen
public-domain code for the guts of such a program, which is what you
would need.
Interesting to think about which problems change between French and
English and which do not.
Good luck -- keep me posted.
[1] This was published by Wesleyan Univ Press, what, nine years ago.
Probably out of print. I do know where to get some copies.
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Software for Poets (Was: Re: Text-to-speech)
Hello M. Hartman,
It's a very big opportunity for me to find someone that both is a poet and
knows something about programming.
First, please excuse my bad english ; I'm a french canadian.
I am dreaming to write a software to help french poets to write strict
rigourous classical poetry. Since calssical poetry is somewhat mathematical,
a lot of tasks can be automatised :
1- Counting the number of syllabs ("pied" in french) in a verse
2- Checking the rimes ; determining the strength of a rime
3- Checking compliance of a poem to a fixed pre-determined classical form (in
french, we have distique, tercet, quatrain, quintain, sixain, huitain,
dizain, triolet, vilanelle, rondeau, rondel, ballade, chant royal, sonnet,
etc.)
4- Propose a synonym that will fit in a verse, i.e. with the right amount of
syllabs
5- Suggest a missing word or expression in a verse by applying the Shannon
text generation principle
First, do you think it may be a useful tool ?
What other features you think can make it usefull for a poet ?
The first task of cutting sentences into syllabs (phonetically of course, not
typographically) is already done. It's been difficult to get it right and to
make it guess correctly with a very very high percentage.
I can very well imagine that the next task is even more difficult. I need to
translate text into phonems. Do you know some software that does it ? I guess
that voice synthetisers that translates written text into spoken text must
first translate the text into phonems. Right ? Do you know if there some way
that I can re-use some sub-modules from these projects that will translate
text into phonems ?
Regards,
Francis Girard
Le dimanche 20 Mars 2005 04:40, Charles Hartman a écrit :
> Does anyone know of a cross-platform (OSX and Windows at least) library
> for text-to-speech? I know there's an OSX API, and probably also for
> Windows. I know PyTTS exists, but it seems to talk only to the Windows
> engine. I'd like to write a single Python module to handle this on both
> platforms, but I guess I'm asking too much -- it's too hardware
> dependent, I suppose. Any hints?
>
> Charles Hartman
> Professor of English, Poet in Residence
> http://cherry.conncoll.edu/cohar
> http://villex.blogspot.com
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