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It thinks "false" is two syllables, which seems to be just a dictionary problem. For something like this, those need to be very diligently squashed if you plan to make something commercial out of it.

The editor is way too small - this is a really simple fix.

Finally, I'm not sure why this is all in PHP - it seems like this would be much easier to use self-hosted or otherwise packaged if it was client-side only PHP and Javascript. It doesn't look like the program does anything which couldn't be done that way trivially - please correct me if I'm wrong.

In other respects, this is pretty basic, but very well-done, particularly for a hackathon project. Nicely done!

1.) Yeah, there're still some bugs that we need to work out. We also need to come up with a more scalable solution of finding rhymes if we go commercial.

2.) Yeah, you're right. We just wanted something that would look good on the projector during our demo. This needs to be tweaked.

3.) You're right for the most part. We didn't really know how we'd be implementing it at the beginning. We thought we'd need to do a lot of heavy server-side processing (which turned out to be a false assumption). We do want to add the ability for users to exist and have poems saved under their account that they can share and stuff though.

4.) Thanks! We decided early on that it'd be better to do a few things well than try to implement a lot of half finished features.

  An IDE for poets
  As shown on Hacker News
  I'll venture: it's a nice opus
  But sometimes slow to use
How do I save what I wrote?
That really bothered me. I understand this is demonstrating a novel UI and user experience, but lack of "save" genuinely ruined my experience.
Yeah because copy/pasting into notepad/gedit/whatever and clicking save is too much work, you would rather want a save button that goes through thousands more hoops, but now someone else does it for you, to have it stored in a server you will never be able to access.
This is something we didn't get to at the hackathon. I agree that this is a feature that needs to be there. We plan on implementing a user system where people can save their poems and choose whether they're private or public. We don't really want to add more features than necessary though. Less is more and whatnot.
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  It went and went
  Like a sent Pequot;
  For at wit's end
  Lied St. Bernard;
  Clothe me master
  Welcome the foe
  To them that desire
  To supper at the broth;
  Oh majesty, the flock,
  The dismembered joint,
  What captured Lemeaux!

  - Dean Rykicz 1903
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Bilal, what you have created here is really quite wonderful.

Please don't smother it with complexity in adding the endless myriad of features people will undoubtedly try to convince you are necessary.

Playing with this has really inspired me to write something today.

Thank you.

Thanks! That's sound advice. We don't plan on adding more features than necessary. A user system with sharing and persistence of poems should be sufficient.
Please dont use facebook/twitter/tumblr for "sharing", a simple link to the poem that can be shared anyway the user pleases should be enough.
Meter control would be useful too. And rhyme highlighting.
I also made a Text Statistics javascript class based off of Mr. Child's! Any plans on putting your version on GitHub - I'd love to star it and use it to improve the version below.

https://github.com/christopherwoodall/Text-Statistics/blob/m...

as a Chrome addon https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reading-level/lgfk...

edit: found it https://github.com/bilalq/Tranquillity-Editor/blob/master/pu...

Great job at Hack 'n Jill, Bilal. Looking forward to more cool projects!
Yea - great job! Hack 'n Jill was a fun time.
Thanks guys. I agree, it was a blast. Hopefully we'll all be seeing each other at other hackathons in the future.
Very nice! Inviting and obvious UI, immediate feedback, this is great stuff. Any plans for this project?

And to top it all off, I can't stop reading that placeholder poem in Yoda's voice.

    Sweaty palmed, I click submit
    and reeled in fatal terror;
    My MVP, I thought I'd shipped...
    Internal Server Error
Edit: This is a wonderful thing. Thank you. Make a (cheap) mobile app with sharing & I'll buy it!
I'm sure you've thought of it, but one could actually get this to do scansion too -- the CMU dictionary here http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/cmudict has stress and syllable breakdowns.
I've tried to use CMUdict for computational poetry... it turns out to be more difficult than it seems at first because stress is context-dependant (especially with monosyllables).
I'm an occasional poet and this is something I've always wanted to build/find. Thanks for putting this together!
My first thought "whoa: this is an IDE for songwriters"

I'll use the shit out of it!

This is neat. I was skeptical about the rhyme matching feature, but I ended up using one of its suggestions.

When lines wrap, they stop lining up with the syllable counts. It would also be nice if the continued lines were indented, but I'm not sure if that's possible with CSS2.

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That is similar to my poetry site -- http://www.literarycorner.org except mine has user accounts and publishing.
I'm not going to sign up just to check the interface out. Maybe you could implement lazy registration.
This is awesome! I've actually been working on something similar to this for awhile. Definitely a great hackathon project :)
A while ago, I came across a test posted here on HN by a researcher at Duke.

He was trying to determine if entrepreneurs are more inclined to take risks than other types of people, as part of an ongoing experiment designed to elicit "what it is" that makes entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs.

Some time after that, in a moment where, I've got to admit, I felt pretty defeated by the difficulties my friends and I were encountering in our startup, I ended up writing a poem.

Not sure how or why it happened, since the words seemed to just 'appear' as if out of thin air, but the end result is something that speaks a great deal - to me at least - about the "whatness" of entrepreneurs.

It takes passion to create something that lives outside yourself, and courage too. The same two qualities which the ancient Greek poets prized above all others in their works.

Makes me wonder if modern-day founders would've been poets in earlier times lol.

Good luck with your project!

--The Bouldrèd Night--

The bouldrèd cliff jutting faintly upon far-off lands a' horizon's light Shows but a whisper of might, but 'ere the closing day foreshadows Defiance borne roughly upon the humble spot of soul and bras.

What power's this come thundrèd forth from falling skies? Keen eyes all watch, yet but few allow the self to see and tell. Many lights, born free, bear out their sights in visions Birthed of other men's ambitions - with scarce looks not in Augury of pomp and silver for their avariced jailer's Searching leap upon the newly-minted throne, gilt of old.

How strange is this? That we should bear ourselves Towards despair, and walk, 'ere the gallows, Hooded, our shackled soul wound round the neck in dreams, False-true, abandoned free of vice for Clarity's comforted Embrace of those acquainted, once met, never cared.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to write. Here you go. Hmmm, first time, adult content?

Pimp done forgot

that he was once able to rhyme a lot

He had the time to slip and slide

and if he was lucky, he got to go for a ride.

These days ain't nuttin' but foolin'

Dealin' in tricks and he hopes it's just retoolin'

Fixing himself up with money,

So one day he can taste that sweet sweet honey.

The truth is that he forgot that the street don't

Ain't no convincing the street you'll come out on top, you just won't

Better to play the slots boy

and pray that you don't get a visit from that ol' Rob Roy

Better cut your losses quick

If you see something brown and sticky, likely to be a stick

Be smart boy and get back to rhymin'

Ain't no facin' death if you xxxx up the timin'.

    What is this I see?
    This I don't understand.
    Near matches, you say?
    I am at your command.
    But the matches don't match!
    The rhymes, they are off!
    What am I to do?
    My brain is too soft.

    Yet now I move boldly
    Into a new verse
    The fucking matches don't work.
    Fuck this bullshit. 

    I could try to understand.
    Study like I'm in school.
    The numbers on the left.
    They seem kind of cool.
    But my attention can't hold.
    The wide internet looms.
    If I am your target,
    your product is doomed.
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  Let me start of by saying thank you!
  Your feedback is great at any rate
  The near matches are there to guide you through
  Tough words you may face that leave you stuck at the gate

  But alas near matches help give you a clue
  To help keep your poem straight
  This tool is still yet a hack and much too new
  Have a bit of hope and we will help you create
  Great poetry for all to view

  I don't believe we are doomed in fate
  The poem you created was amazing and true
  I see it as a victory that you found time to try and operate
  So please let us try to make your experience less blue
  By letting us know what we can improve to ease your current state

    I do think it's nice
    I poke and I jest
    This mu'fuckin thingy
    It's really the best

    Despite the bad rhymes
    Showing up on the right
    I think this here app
    Is tighter than tight

    Do you not see wrong words?
    Showing up over there?
    Right now it says "bright"
    Which we both know ain't right
    My poem til here
    Was like ABCB?
    A failure perhaps
    To detect that rhyme scheme?

    I'm not a poet 
    I think you can tell
    I'm just like a kid
    Just ringing a bell

    So what do I know?
    Maybe it's right.
    I'll stop here for now
    And bid you goodnight.
Edit: Ooohhhh, I'm supposed to enter the Rhyme Scheme manually. I assumed it was supposed to be automatically inferred from the poem. It wasn't obvious to me that the rhyme scheme is an input field.
I'm not sure you're not a poet. This one and your earlier one have a certain something that is definitely more than what is being added by the tool (compare them with the response by demodesigns, yours are simply better poetry).

I particularly like

    Right now it says "bright"
    Which we both know ain't right"
Because of course as soon as you used it it became right.

By the way, the numbers on the left are the syllable count. Pretty useful if you're doing a limerick or haiku.

This is wonderful!

What API/dataset are you using for the rhymes?

This is great. Thanks for posting it. I had some trouble with the syllable counts, but this is really useful for, well, quickly writing rhyming poetry. Good work.
If you're looking for suggestions: If you really want people to use this as a writing tool, make the interface itself more tranquil - the "Tranquillity" title is distracting, and the poem title typeface is awful. Not everyone who writes poetry is into that kind of frilly aesthetic. Find a few well-designed poetry books to use as design examples. A full-screen mode would be easy to implement and super useful.

Similarly, the rhyming tools are interesting, but make them hideable for anyone who is not using them. I would use a thesaurus a thousand times more often than a rhyming dictionary.

I actually like the fixed-width font but suspect many wouldn't. Maybe an option to switch between fixed-width and not. Also, I expect to be able to use the tab key to indent, but it doesn't work here.

Saving and revision control would be great.