Fun with SCIgen
Probably everyone has heard of the automatic Computer Science paper generator written by three clever MIT students. Well, since I had a bit of time to spare (but was too tired for serious work) I adapted it for physics, especially solid state physics and neutron scattering.
The repository is public, and here is an example paper.
Oh yes, it's written in Perl. If I have a bit more time to spare, I'll perhaps translate it into Python. For now, I mostly adapted the content it generates, added a bit more math, stuff like that.
The amazing thing is how easy it was to adapt -- their "grammar" for papers is really easy to get into (and it doesn't have dollar signs!). Let us thank god no Java is involved, else it'd be one gigantic XML file, very handy to edit. Have a look at the rule file -- it should be clear within a few minutes how it works.
NB: if anyone doubted that English was the right choice for the academic language, that this works is a very compelling argument, isn't it?
The repository is public, and here is an example paper.
Oh yes, it's written in Perl. If I have a bit more time to spare, I'll perhaps translate it into Python. For now, I mostly adapted the content it generates, added a bit more math, stuff like that.
The amazing thing is how easy it was to adapt -- their "grammar" for papers is really easy to get into (and it doesn't have dollar signs!). Let us thank god no Java is involved, else it'd be one gigantic XML file, very handy to edit. Have a look at the rule file -- it should be clear within a few minutes how it works.
NB: if anyone doubted that English was the right choice for the academic language, that this works is a very compelling argument, isn't it?
— Benjamin on Thursday, January 29, 2009 2:58 #
"On the other hand, frustrations
might not be the panacea that chemists expected"
— István Albert on Thursday, January 29, 2009 3:07 #