Integrate vale support

[sbstn87]

Would it be possible to integrate support for Vale in NovelWriter?

https://github.com/errata-ai/vale

Vale is a command-line tool that brings code-like linting to prose. It's fast, cross-platform (Windows, macOS, and Linux), and highly customizable.

[vkbo]

Not familiar with it, and after browsing around both in their repo and on their website, I still don't get a good idea of what it actually does. It's actually quite baffling how they go on and on about the technical setup and don't go much beyond a few meaningless buzzwords on what it actually does.

So could you explain what it would do in novelWriter?

(Not to say I would be opposed to it, I just need more information.)

(Also, yes, I found the author's Medium article too, which is locked behind a login wall.)

[sbstn87]

Being able to run Vale from novelWriter level could allow checking and correcting text for spelling and styling errors.

How exactly one would use it - this is left to user's discretion.

As you could probably see, there are already existing integrations with for example VS Code or emacs.

[vkbo]

Ok, but what does it do exactly? That is still unclear to me.

"Vale is a command-line tool that brings code-like linting to prose." tells me practically nothing useful.

Basically, does it provide a return data type I can integrate? What is it exactly designed for? As far as I can tell, it's targeted at technical writing, which does not fit for novelWriter. Does it provide suggestions? How is the data processed, and more importantly, where?

It would be great to integrate with a text analysis tool. It's on my wish list. But I do have a few criteria:

• It must run entirely locally, so no cloud/online services.
• It must not be a generative tool.
• It must be capable of processing fiction, not designed for technical writing.

[peter88213]

I looked at it too. The command line tool reads a text file and returns textual “error messages” containing rows and columns, as well as explanations and references to the violated rules.

The program works completely offline, but according to the documentation, the setup effort seems to be considerable. In any case, it looks as if the program could be taught the peculiarities of novelWriter markup. Whether vale supports a language other than English is still unclear to me.

In the first attempt, you could start the program as a sub-process, capture its output as a JSON data set, and then mark up the reported locations in the editor and link to the explanation.

For integration into third-party programs, however, the providers have intended a more sophisticated method, involving a language server with which you communicate via a standardized interface (LSP).

The catch is probably that vale has to be installed and set up by the users (this mainly involves their spelling and style preferences), which does not seem to be entirely trivial. In addition, the rules of the novelWriter markup would have to be provided by novelWriter in some form.

Edit: Implementing something like this might be a sporting challenge, but as a writer, I can't imagine using it. Perhaps the OP would be so kind as to provide an example of how vale specifically improves a prose text?

[vkbo]

Thanks @peter88213. I managed to find some of the same information after looking a bit. But you seems to have found more.

Edit: Implementing something like this might be a sporting challenge, but as a writer, I can't imagine using it. Perhaps the OP would be so kind as to provide an example of how vale specifically improves a prose text?

Yes, this is yet not clear to me either.

I would be happy to implement some text analysis tool, as long as it is relevant for fiction writing (Vale still looks like it's aimed at technical writing to me) and gets nowhere near generative models. I won't support plagiarism or any of its equivalents.

[peter88213]

As far as I understand it, vale itself does not contain any style rules, but processes those that the user sets up. There are various sources for this, which are also mentioned. However, I can't say anything about their quality because I usually write in German.

In the German-speaking writing scene, the word processing program Papyrus Autor has long been very popular, precisely because it offers a style check. I tried it out once, but didn't see any need for it. It's annoying until you deactivate one rule after the other.

Then there is the LibreOffice extension LanguageTool, which can be used online and offline as a style checker. The download file is huge (over a gigabyte if I'm not mistaken), and the check has a noticeable impact on the performance of LibreOffice.

AI-based style checking has recently been added to the writing program DramaQueen. It looks really impressive and can, for example, change the narrative perspective or adapt the writing style to a specific writer. However, you have to pay usage fees for this. Actually I don't need that.

[vkbo]

Then there is the LibreOffice extension LanguageTool, which can be used online and offline as a style checker. The download file is huge (over a gigabyte if I'm not mistaken), and the check has a noticeable impact on the performance of LibreOffice.

Yes, that was feature request #515, which I in the end closed because the whole procedure around it is just too bulky to deal with.

AI-based style checking has recently been added to the writing program DramaQueen. It looks really impressive and can, for example, change the narrative perspective or adapt the writing style to a specific writer. However, you have to pay usage fees for this. Actually I don't need that.

ML-based checking is fine. That's what LanguageTool does anyway. Support for LLM-generated content is something novelWriter will absolutely not include. If people want to cheat, I don't want to provide the platform for it.