
Don't Support Information Architects - chmars
http://www.candlerblog.com/2013/12/23/no-thanks-ia/
======
coldtea
For people waxing about what "Syntax Control" is, and coming to some over the
top descriptions of clever AI, machine learning and what have you.

You're overthinking it.

It's the most naive implementation you can think of. It's exactly this: you
select "verbs" and the verbs are highlighted. You select "nouns" and the nouns
are. Same for adjectives, adverbs, prepositions (as, from, in, etc) and
conjuctions (and, or, etc).

Nothing earth shattering, nothing you can't do with simply tagging words,
nothing marchine-learning or AI about it.

Here's an example of Syntax Control in action:
[http://imgur.com/NrseuZV](http://imgur.com/NrseuZV)

Beside the naiveness of the core functionality, notice also how naive the
tagging is. As noted below by bosie, "programming" is marked as a verb in the
phrase "in programming terms", syntactic context be damned. Same for "run-on"
where run is highlighted as a verb too.

P.S Damn, it's even worse than that. All the hard work -- which was not that
hard itself -- was already made by Apple in their CoreText API. According to
the Verge:

"> _the heavy lifting is already baked into Apple’s developer platform. Since
iOS 5 and OS X 10.7, Apple has provided a class called NSLinguisticTagger that
segments natural-language text and labels the text with various bits of
information, including parts of speech_ ".

P.S 2 Now, since Apple itself added the capability to tag parts of speech in
the iOS API, and since this is a very obvious example of using this (Apple
themselves showed something similar in WWDC 2011 IIRC), isn't iA's patent
application essentially like asking to restrict the use of Apple's very
specific API? It would be interesting to see iA's lawyers fight Apple's
lawyers.

P.S 3 This was part of a comment in a sub-thread, but thought it would be more
useful posted at the top level to give everybody an idea of the feature.

~~~
fhars
Not to distract from the core of your argument, but "simply tagging words" is
still a hard AI problem in general, with all those pesky "time flies like an
arrow" vs. "fruit flies like an apple" cases. Of course you are not doing
anything innovative in that area if you just call an API provided by someone
who did the hard work.

~~~
ballard
Semantic checking seems far off, but would be an impressive accomplishment:

"Invisible pink bananas sleep furiously."

~~~
dTal
Don't you mean colorless green ideas?

------
ynniv
IANAL.

The definition of "obviousness" in a patent is whether there exist two works
of prior art that can be combined to create the invention. In this case, any
prior art that stylizes text based on syntax could be combined with any prior
art that determines the syntax of natural language to invalidate a later
patent that stylizes natural language text based on syntax.

Whether the output feels different and non-obvious to a user is unimportant.
Application to a different domain ("programming" versus "writing") is
irrelevant. Patent law is very mechanical, and the rule is that it must not be
any combination of prior art unless the means of combination is patentable on
its own.

iA appears to be attempting to enforce their idea through pre-emptive public
shaming of future competitors, which could be effective in a community of
creative writers, but doesn't legally hold water.

~~~
blazespin
Do you have a link / reference on that definition? I haven't seen it before.

~~~
ynniv
Search for "legal conclusion of obviousness" in the Wikipedia page
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_step_and_non-
obviousn...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_step_and_non-obviousness)

------
twoodfin
Unless you're against all software patents on principle, I don't see an
argument here for why patenting this feature deserves scorn.

If it behaves the way it's described, it sounds remarkably useful. Indeed it's
obvious in retrospect, but that's true of many physical inventions worthy of
patents.

Is there prior art? The example of Phraseology's "Inspect" doesn't seem
similar at all. It's not a visualization tool; it's an analysis tool.

~~~
tbrownaw
_If it behaves the way it 's described, it sounds remarkably useful._

It sounds like the syntax highlighting that every half-decent IDE and
programmer's editor has had since forever. Which is odd, since there's no way
that should take 4 years to implement.

~~~
wodenokoto
You obvious know next to nothing about English syntax. Have you never wondered
why you can learn python in a day or two, but not English or Chinese?

First of, you need a huge dictionary of all words and rules for their
conjugations. Then you need a huge rule set for bound morphemes. Which
adjectives can you add 'ly' to in order to make them adverbs? There are
literally hundreds if not thousands of bound morphemes and they can sometimes
only be applied to certain words within certain word-classes.

Then you need a huge rule set for when each word acts as a specific word class
(is bank a noun or a verb? Is anime a noun or an adjective? Is like a verb or
preposition? You know, "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana",
actually like can behave like several wordclasses)

These are not solved problems yet, but we are getting very good at them now.
We weren't 4 years ago.

Failing that, you could also take and annotate word classes in thousands of
pages of text, and then use a machine algorithm to apply similar annotations
in the the text entered into the program. Unless you are expecting people to
write articles for the Wall Street Journal, this might not be such a good
route either.

~~~
coldtea
> _You obvious know next to nothing about English syntax. Have you never
> wondered why you can learn python in a day or two, but not English or
> Chinese?_

And you obviously know next to nothing about how this is implemented in Writer
Pro.

We're not talking about AI-level intelligent understanding of english here
(which not even MS Word has in its syntax check). We're talking about a ho-
hum, "this word is a noun, this is verb" etc kind of tagging, which just needs
some metadata (you can even scrap off of an online dictionary).

~~~
function_seven
There is some context-awareness required, though. Verbs can almost always
function as nouns, too. To determine which requires some reasoning about the
sentence a word appears in.

    
    
      "Drive to the store." vs. "I'm going for a drive."
      "Don't punch Judy!" vs. "I gave Judy some punch."
    

You're right, though. It's not AI-level intelligence required for this.

~~~
coldtea
> _There is some context-awareness required, though. Verbs can almost always
> function as nouns, too._

Absolutely. And Writer Pro breaks down completely at such distinctions. Some
words are always marked as verbs and others as nouns, context be damned.

------
coldtea
I was a happy user of iA Writer: loads fast, does what I want, prevents me
from messing with settings for hours, etc.

Writer Pro is just BS. A half-assed product to make money off of people who
already bought Writer.

The "workflow" involves just showing you the same text with a different font,
depending on which step you selected (Notes, Write, Edit, Read). When you step
into "write" mode, you're editing what you wrote in "notes" mode. If you step
back to "notes" mode, you just see what you were editing in "write" mode --
that is, you cannot keep notes that are not part of the final output,
something every writer does. Only the font chances, you're working with one
document all the time.

As for the show syntax "innovation", it's just highlighting different parts of
speech (verbs, nouns, etc). Nothing extremely worth your while.

Those 2 half-baked features (with several MIA from iA Writer) are not worthy
of the "Pro" moniker.

Opinionated software I'm fine with (I like iA Writer). This is more: "software
that has the opinion that it should scam you out of your money" (especially
with the only way to check it out being buying it from the App Store).

------
testing12341234
Since Apple provides the metadata tagging of the words via NSLinguisticTagger,
then is this the web equivalent:

//dim non-anchor tags

$('*').not('a').addClass('dim');

//hightlight anchor tags

$('a').addClass('highlight');

If the browser provided the syntax metadata, then I don't see how this example
with anchor tags is logically different. This appears to be obvious and
trivial, where a patent requires non-obviousness and non-trivialness given the
state of the art.

The linked demo at
[https://github.com/macguru/SyntaxCheck](https://github.com/macguru/SyntaxCheck)
also seems to show the trivialness of this.

------
jdkram
Articles linked to by this one are more informative regarding legal clout
behind Reichenstein's claims:
[http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/21/5234580/patent-pending-
ia...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/21/5234580/patent-pending-ias-militant-
stance-on-syntax-control)

It does seem a bit much to be making so much out of a feature that's 90% Apple
framework.

------
travisjeffery
[http://travisjeffery.com/b/2013/12/implementing-writer-
pros-...](http://travisjeffery.com/b/2013/12/implementing-writer-pros-syntax-
highlighting-using-nslinguistictagger/)

Here's how to implement the feature iA's saying is such an innovation in < 20
lines.

------
coldtea
I'd like to see iA being hit with their own medicine, to taste what it feels
like.

Let some patent holders hit with other text editing patterns that they
violated in iA Writer and Writer Pro.

The "font adjusting size to the size of the window" would be a good start. Or
how about "word count based on text selection". Or "auto formatting markup
syntax". Or "modal writing workflow".

------
jameszhang
iA has decided to not pursue the patent on Syntax Control, and attributes
decision to DHH.

[https://twitter.com/iA/status/416393539182796800](https://twitter.com/iA/status/416393539182796800)

------
plg
I'm surprised nobody has written an emacs mode for "syntax control"

... yet

~~~
binarymax
This raises a larger question about patents in software. If I can anonymously
create a program or feature that violates a patent, and release it to the wild
as free and open...the patent holders have nobody to go after.

~~~
aidenn0
They can go after everyone who downloads it, because they will be violating
the patent too.

~~~
secstate
Haha, and then you wind up looking like the RIAA, suing your hoped-for
audience. Only tone-deaf execs and greedy lawyers would sue their audience
members.

And before you say, "but they were stealing and so weren't going to be part of
the audience." I'm well aware of that, but the reality is that you're drawing
out the ire of folks from amongst your hoped for audience. Just not a good
plan.

~~~
aidenn0
the fact that it's not a good plan hasn't stopped others from doing it. It's
not much of a comfort to know that the person ergo who sued you made a bad
business move.

------
jahewson
It's not too hard to find what seems to be prior art for this idea, even if
it's not a feature you actually see in many word processors. For example this
blog post from 2007 shows a screenshot of a text editor syntax-highlighting
English:

[http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/syntaxhighlighting/](http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/syntaxhighlighting/)

Likewise this project on GitHub from a year ago shows NSLinguisticTagger being
used in a similar way:

[https://github.com/adib/ColorizeWords](https://github.com/adib/ColorizeWords)

------
throwawaykf03
1\. Until we see what they're trying to claim, we don't know what the patent
covers. At this point it seems it's just a provisional, which means they might
not even have drafted the claims yet.

2\. The use of Apple's existing APIs to do the "heavy lifting" has no bearing
on the "quality" of the patent or the novelty (if any) of the work. All
inventions are built on prior work.

3\. As a corollary, the triviality of implementation is orthogonal to
obviousness of an idea. As an extreme example, RSA is pretty easy to
implement, but it was a breakthrough nonetheless. (Of course, patents very
rarely cover anything as groundbreaking -- the bar is and always has been much
lower.)

4\. If you are concerned that this leads to an unnecessarily broad patent,
submit it to askpatents.com, along with any relevant prior art. This will
increase the chances an examiner will find it, especially since it's highly
unlikely that they're going to look at WWDC videos.

Unfortunately, as it's not even a non-provisional application at this point,
you would need to wait for one to be filed and published. This could be as
much as two and a half years from now, and I doubt anyone will even remember
by then.

------
bjenik
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part-of-
speech_tagging](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part-of-speech_tagging) So the
"new" "invention" they want to patent is "we can display the result" which
basically is nothing more than syntax highlighting? Or did I get something
wrong?

------
daemonk
I don't get what syntax control is. Is it just a count of different
grammatical categories? Does it do some kind of sentiment analysis and tell
you if your sentence structure is aggressive or something?

~~~
chime
As I understood from the original blog post, it identifies bad syntax more
easily, enabling you to correct them. In programming terms, it would be a
macro that finds code smells and lets you refactor easily. The example he gave
was identifying excessive adjective use.

Imaging writing a 100+ page document and doing Menu > Syntax Control >
Adjectives and seeing all the places where you use unnecessary adjectives. Or
really long, run-on sentences. Or extra semicolons. These may be correct
grammatically but they might lower readability so you want to minimize their
use.

I could be wrong but I think this is what they meant by Syntax Control -
ability to detect syntax use in English and not highlight/fading text color.
If it is the former, I can absolutely see why it took four years to create.

~~~
coldtea
Actually you're overthinking it. It's nothing of the short (I've bought Writer
Pro).

It's exactly this: you select "verbs" and the verbs are highlighted. You
select "nouns" and the nouns are. Same for adjectives, adverbs, prepositions
(as, from, in) and conjuctions (and, or).

Nothing earth shattering, nothing you can't do with simply tagging words,
nothing marchine-learning or AI about it.

Here's an example:

[http://imgur.com/NrseuZV](http://imgur.com/NrseuZV)

P.S Damn, it's even worse than that. All the hard work -- which was not that
hard itself -- was already made by Apple in their CoreText API. According to
the Verge:

" _the heavy lifting is already baked into Apple’s developer platform. Since
iOS 5 and OS X 10.7, Apple has provided a class called NSLinguisticTagger that
segments natural-language text and labels the text with various bits of
information, including parts of speech_ ".

~~~
bosie
thank you for the screenshot. though i do wonder, what exactly is it
highlighting? "in programming terms," \- why is programming a verb and what
good does it do to highlight it?

~~~
coldtea
Because it's as naive an implementation as it can be, as I said.

Programming can be a verb and a noun, and it just happens they have it tagged
as a verb -- context and syntax be damned.

(Or actually, it's Apple's API that does the tagging. They just take advantage
of it, and do the oh-so-difficult work of highligting the tagged words)

Unlike, say, Word's "syntax correct" feature, "Syntax Control" has very little
to do with recognising syntax.

------
evolve2k
Please put the update at the top of the article, felt a little mislead after
reading the full drama then only being told at the end that it was no longer
current.

------
lp251
Somewhat off topic from the article, but are there any similar tools that work
with TeX files?

------
AnotherDesigner
I doubt somebody that gets upset about a small company protecting their idea
with a patent (that he hasn't even seen) would actually buy software from them
anyway.

His example ("prior art") wasn't remotely relevant.

So many upset about something you have no information on. But go ahead, grab
your pitchforks and go hurt another small developer.

------
eps
Screw you, bud.

Hindsight is always 20/20, especially when it involves obvious things that
somehow nobody managed to combine in a certain very useful way before. You can
slap a piece of fried squid on a bowl of risotto, but that doesn't make sushi
an obvious derived work.

------
FuckFrankie
I guess only big tech companies can have patents.

------
blahbl4hblahtoo
This is an area where the downvotes are just waiting to crush you...but as per
usual, I disagree with the premise that these guys have done something wrong.

Patents and copyright provide small businesses or inventors the means to
monetize their innovation for a time. I don't see what's wrong with that. It
could stand being reformed, like almost everything in American civil
life...institutions are broken all over...but holding this small group of ira
glass look-a-likes responsible for the larger system being broken is kind of
lame.

They made something wonderful, they should be able to be rewarded under the
terms of the law. Don't like the law? Take that up in the political process.

At this point usually everyone says that the political process is irreparably
broken and the Republic is lost. If you think that's the case...I don't
know...just kill yourself. There's nothing you can do and everything,
everywhere, is bad. Woe is me. Oh. Oh, woe is me.

~~~
tptacek
Patents and copyrights are more different than similar. Copyrights provide
immediate protection with almost no up-front cost, and apply almost invariably
to cases where people have deliberately and overtly derived value from your
work.

A small business attempting to make use of the patent system can expect to
spend many tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of waiting 5-7 years
for the issuance of a document that entitles them to wait 2-5 years for the
privilege of a hearing in court which only has a chance of being remunerative
if the counterparty is a gigantic tech company that can afford to bury you in
legal costs.

Aside from all this, flip a coin: heads you're in the "right" and have a
"case", tails your patent claims are insufficient to keep anyone from
realizing value from the idea underlying your patent: you lose, and we all
breathe a sigh of relief.

Patents make sense for some industries, where inventions are clear (or at
least justiciable) and product lifecycles are measured in half-decades. But
they are decidedly unuseful for software entrepreneurs.

Patents are a pox on the software industry.

(I have a few, from earlier in my career; I've never been the one paying for
them).

------
tbrownaw
While information architecture is important, having a dedicated information
architect leads to an "ivory tower" effect. This generates massive amounts of
paperwork and unnecessary design artifacts and also decouples the resulting
architecture from the needs of the application. These effects more than negate
the benefit of having a specialized resource fill the information architect
role.

Don't support information architects... hire multi-skilled developers who can
do the information architecture themselves.

~~~
beaumartinez
Did you even read the article? It's not about "information architects" in
general, it's about the company Information Architects (iA).

~~~
tbrownaw
Yes I did (some nut want to patent syntax highlighting). And then I thought it
would be amusing to try to see what would have led to the headline meaning
what I had expected it to mean. Apparently you people have no sense of humor.
:)

~~~
ZachPruckowski
It's not about people not having senses of humor. It's just that "successful
impersonation of a dumb/annoying post" is still a dumb/annoying post.

