

Show HN: Backseat Writer – write like Shakespeare and others - trevorah
http://trevorah.github.com/backseat-writer

======
pbhjpbhj
Looks like it produces a lot of spam blog comments ...

------
mlader
Happy April Fools Day to you too =D

------
trevorah
Opinions?

~~~
andreasvc
What is it supposed to do? I try to type a sentence but it is immediately
garbled by random words. If there were two boxes, one for input and output,
things wouldn't get mixed up, or perhaps a "Shakespearize" button. Right now
the edit box is not really usable because the script interferes with normal
editing.

EDIT: Another note, while the references to Shannon & Markov chain are
correct, in NLP this would more commonly be referred to as a character n-gram
model.

~~~
trevorah
It's meant to interfere with your writing, like a backseat driver interferes
with your driving. Your idea of separation is interesting, do you see it as a
kind of translator?

~~~
andreasvc
I imagine a backseat driver shouts suggestions, but does not take over the
wheel; like the way autocomplete is there without preventing you from typing
something else. It doesn't have to be a translator, but there should be some
distinction between user input and what comes from the model, and the user
should have the final say.

