Duckling
Languages and libraries
parsing library
SHOW HN2014
136points
67comments
#189of 2,272 in 2014
Top 9%of 2014 by points
How HN took it
CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments
8 positive, 23 neutral or asking, 2 mixed, 11 critical, out of 44 comments about the project. Thread score -0.13.
Execution: 3 for, 8 againstIdea: 4 for, 1 againstDesign: 0 for, 1 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 natural time phrases
From 2 comments
I'm impressed. I thought I'd try it with `next wednesday at 20 to 3 in the afternoon`. It understood! It didn't understand if I used `afternon`. Perhaps as an improvement it…
aembleton on HNThis is cool! I too was pretty impressed it nailed "the second friday of october 2017", was kind of hoping it would get "the second friday of october in 4 years" but still cool
taternuts on HN
Good choice of focused scope and clear docs
From 1 comment
This project looks great. I think it's a great example of finding one thing to do well, and doing it well (though of course, there are the other competitors you will have to…
hardwaresofton on HN
Objections
Misses regional and colloquial expressions like fortnight and Scottish phrasing
From 3 comments
Unfortunately it doesn't parse a Scottish colloquial expression such as "the next again day at 4pm". Which means in two days time at 4pm :)
teh_klev on HNLikewise it doesn't know what a fortnight is.
AbsoluteDestiny on HNIt also doesn't understand basic britishisms like "Friday week" or "a week on Friday"
pacaro on HN
Ambiguous handling of times like 6 o'clock and day/month order
From 2 comments
One suggestion from a use-case standpoint. On iOS, "tomorrow at 6" is parsed as 6PM instead of 6AM. This makes sense because usually people really mean 6PM. This is context…
aleem on HNAre there countries that use slashes for d/m/y? What surprised me was "1-2-2014": ``` From Thursday, 2 October 2014 at 1:02:00 +0000 (UTC) to Wednesday, 1 January 2014 at 0:00:00…
Someone on HN
No time zone support for place names
From 2 comments
It seems to have problems with places as time zones, e.g. next sunday noon, german time
heeen on HNLooking forward to time zones support in something like this. Parsing phrases like "4 o'clock tomorrow my time" or "8am on the East Coast" would be useful. Few libraries that try…
Thrymr on HN
Requests
Support time zones and place names
From 3 comments
It seems to have problems with places as time zones, e.g. next sunday noon, german time
heeen on HNLooking forward to time zones support in something like this. Parsing phrases like "4 o'clock tomorrow my time" or "8am on the East Coast" would be useful. Few libraries that try…
Thrymr on HNSuggestion: if you want people using the demo page to be able to spot errors easily, it would be useful to give a plain english description of when the time they specified is.…
hamburglar on HN
Handle typos and colloquial expressions
From 2 comments
Thanks! Yes we should probably relax a little bit the lexical analysis to cope with typos, thanks for your feedback.
ar7hur on HNI'm very excited about supporting Scottish colloquial expressions! Working on it now, thanks :)
ar7hur on HN
Show assumptions and alternate results
From 2 comments
You're spot on. The next version of Duckling will return the list of assumptions made, as well as a list of alternate results. Applications will also be able to give assumptions…
blandinw on HNAbsolutely. We are working on something called "assumptions" where Duckling informs you about what assumptions it made to produce the result (like: time was ambiguous, I chose…
ar7hur on HN
Questions
How does it compare to SUTime and other temporal taggers
From 1 comment
I have been frantically researching for a temporal tagging library that can be used on an Android application with no good results. I have looked at SUTime, HeidelTime, natty and…
trab on HN
Can it run on Android or iOS
From 2 comments
I have been frantically researching for a temporal tagging library that can be used on an Android application with no good results. I have looked at SUTime, HeidelTime, natty and…
trab on HNLooks very cool, but sadly I have no way to use Clojure on my iOS apps.
coldcode on HN
Alternatives named
SUTime
From 2 comments
This project looks great. I think it's a great example of finding one thing to do well, and doing it well (though of course, there are the other competitors you will have to…
hardwaresofton on HNI have been frantically researching for a temporal tagging library that can be used on an Android application with no good results. I have looked at SUTime, HeidelTime, natty and…
trab on HN
Chronic
From 2 comments
If you want to do this in Ruby try Chronic. https://github.com/mojombo/chronic
sleepyhead on HNWho wants to use this to make an Alfred Workflow that creates Google Calendar events? :) QuickCal hasn't been supported in years.
medell on HN
Date::Manip and DateTime::Format::Natural
From 1 comment
Perl modules to implement this would be Date::Manip and DateTime::Format::Natural. To see some funnier modules (like calculating Discordian dates or Japanese eras) look here:…
peterwwillis on HN