English syntax highlighter
Languages and libraries
natural language tooling
SHOW HN2016
147points
57comments
#228of 2,264 in 2016
Top 11%of 2016 by points
How HN took it
DebatedReal support and real criticism
11 positive, 15 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 10 critical, out of 36 comments about the project. Thread score -0.02.
Execution: 5 for, 6 againstIdea: 6 for, 2 againstDesign: 0 for, 2 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Impressive handling of tricky sentences like repeated words and garden-path phrases.
From 2 comments
It does ok at other phrases, though. ``` Never hide hides. The sound sounds sound. Flies fly. It's the right right, right? The key key is this one. It's an objective objective.…
jychang on HNThis is impressive! Wonder where are the limits of the algorithm...
smilekzs on HN
Useful for learning languages and structured text.
From 3 comments
That's beautiful! I wish that someone could make that for Chinese. I'm trying to learn Chinese now, and I think it would be easier in colour. Also, is there a way to run this…
peterburkimsher on HNI think this is kind of neat for structured English as opposed to prose. Prose tends to look like vegetable soup, but I pasted a very regularly phrased and structured todo list…
melloclello on HNOne of the things that machine learning teaches us is that the cycle between running a test on the environment and getting feedback is critical. One of the major problems with…
jerf on HN
Objections
Misclassifies garden-path sentences and some determiners.
From 4 comments
It does seem to have issues wit garden path sentences - in "The old man the boat", it colors "man" as a noun rather than a verb.
skykooler on HNYup. ``` The old man the boat. The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families. The man whistling tunes pianos. Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a…
thylacine222 on HNI tried it with: ``` The red car This red car Your red car ``` And it marked "Your" like "red" and not like "The" or "This". Surely "your" is a determiner and not an adjective? I…
cabalamat on HNBut not the imperative: ``` Google "Google beats go champion". ``` Which it interprets as: ``` Noun Noun Noun Verb Noun ```
brudgers on HN
Too many colors; needs legend and configurable parts of speech.
From 3 comments
My only request would be to make the highlighted parts of speech configurable. For me it's too active with 11 different colors/things demanding attention. But it would be awesome…
trebor on HNCould you please add a legend to indicate what the colors mean?
photon_off on HNIt would be nice if you put the color of the words in a separate key, rather than in the example box.
gyhchang on HN
Coloring by token category is not really syntax highlighting.
From 2 comments
It's strange to me that we call these things "syntax highlighters", given that they don't really seem to colour things differently according to syntax,† but rather by the…
TazeTSchnitzel on HN"Lexical coloring" or "Lexical color-coding" would be even more appropriate. However, you are slightly wrong, depending on the coloring engine and language. The syntax coloring…
kazinator on HN
Requests
Add a legend and clearer instructions.
From 2 comments
Could you please add a legend to indicate what the colors mean?
photon_off on HNIt would be nice if you put the color of the words in a separate key, rather than in the example box.
gyhchang on HN
Make colors configurable or toggleable.
From 1 comment
My only request would be to make the highlighted parts of speech configurable. For me it's too active with 11 different colors/things demanding attention. But it would be awesome…
trebor on HN
Open source the code.
From 2 comments
Are there plans to open source this or does anyone know of OS projects that does this? Thanks!
no1youknowz on HNHello! Are you open sourcing this? If so- can I use your library?
sethjgore on HN
Show sentence structure or parse trees.
From 2 comments
Very interesting. I've toyed around this idea myself and come to the conclusion that coloring on part of the speech level is not that useful for the educational aspects I'm…
laurieg on HNI think a highlighting that helps parse the sentence structure would me more useful.
chronial on HN
Questions
Is the project open source?
From 2 comments
Are there plans to open source this or does anyone know of OS projects that does this? Thanks!
no1youknowz on HNHello! Are you open sourcing this? If so- can I use your library?
sethjgore on HN
Can it support Chinese or other languages?
From 2 comments
That's beautiful! I wish that someone could make that for Chinese. I'm trying to learn Chinese now, and I think it would be easier in colour. Also, is there a way to run this…
peterburkimsher on HNI can really see this being useful for any language.
cgm616 on HN
Alternatives named
displaCy parse tree viewer
From 1 comment
There are plenty of tools that can draw a variety of tree structures over English text.…
wodenokoto on HN
Green-bridge.org
From 1 comment
Green-bridge.org
sethjgore on HN
Vim syntax coloring
From 1 comment
"Lexical coloring" or "Lexical color-coding" would be even more appropriate. However, you are slightly wrong, depending on the coloring engine and language. The syntax coloring…
kazinator on HN