Smart Edit (for Novelists & Creative Writers)

[Curt]

I am very fond of the humble PageFour ("Software for Novelists and Creative Writers"). Now the same company, (Bad Wolf Software, Manchester, U.K.), has launched a stand-alone piece of accessory: Smart Edit ("Editing Software for Novelists & Creative Writers") - for any editor.

However, the price is $70, so I haven't yet tested it...

Smart Edit

SmartEdit is new software, first released in December 2012. Though minor upgrades are free to licensed users, the software is sold ‘as is’, for what it does today, not for what it might do in the future.


SmartEdit Checks:

   Repeated Phrases List
   Repeated Words List
   Adverb Usage List
   Monitored Words List

   Dialog Tag Counter
   Cliché List
   Separate Dialog & Prose Checks
   Misused Word List
   Foreign Phrase Usage List

   Profanity Usage List
   Suspect Punctuation List
   Proper Nouns List
   Acronyms List
   Sentence Start List

   Sentence Length Graph
   Smart & Straight Quote Checker
   Dash and Hyphen Checker
   Word, Character & Page Count


What Does SmartEdit Do?:

SmartEdit runs a series of 20 individual checks on your work and highlights areas that might need to be looked at. These checks include: highlighting repeated phrases and words, producing a list of every adverb used, flagging possible misused or misspelled words such as “complement” instead of “compliment”.

SmartEdit also examines your sentence structures: highlighting common phrases you use to begin sentences, monitoring sentence length, as well as flagging possibly incorrect punctuation, such as multiple exclamation marks (“!!!?”), or inconsistent use of smart quotes and straight quotes.


What Does SmartEdit NOT Do?:

It does not tell you to remove or replace a word. It does not make any automated changes for you. It does not tell you whether your work might be good, bad, or somewhere in between.

These decisions and interpretations are yours, and only yours to make. Software cannot make them for you, and should not even try. After all, how many repeated phrases are to be found in Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech? Would that speech be remembered today if Dr. King had removed all but one of those “I have a dream” phrases in response to a software prompt?

http://www.smart-edit.com/

[attachimg=#]


http://www.smart-edit.com/

[dr_andus]

However, the price is $70, so I haven't yet tested it...

There is also a free version with limited features, if you scroll down: http://www.smart-edit.com/download.html

[helmut85]

Curt, please allow for an irrelevant criticism, then for a (useful?) hint.


Re PageFour: I couldn't resist the free offer on bits some days ago, but I didn't even install the prog, because (and I knew this when downloading it):

On first sight, it seems to be a 3-pane outliner, with PM (project management), but then, of course, this very first, additional little window there (that's missing from competing sw) is NOT some sort of a PM window, into which you could clone parts of your tree, but it's simply a de-compacting of the tree itself: Could come handy here and there, but is false promises at the end of the day, and I so much long for a real PM additional window that I couldn't bear this simili one. Rant off.


Re word count / word listing tools. First, you must distinguish between the word count and the word listing variety: These categories appear similar, voire are often mixed-up in the web, when in fact it's totally different sw:

Word counting sw (as do MS word, or translating sw, but external tools count more words!) is for translators paid by the word (hence them paying for additional tools, after so many translations, those pay over what they would have got for free in Word or their translation sw), whilst word listing tools build up lists of any word used (i.e. they count them separately), e.g. by decreasing frequency.

My hint being, such sw can be really helpful, in order to detect misspellings, for one, by way of just looking at the terms further down in such a list: Also, here, you'll find rare words / (too) rarely used synonyms of more general terms used more frequently, and some of which you then might wish to replace by some of the rarer ones, and also all these misspelled words. I admit the utility of checking for these here isn't as important when you use in-built spellchecking functions in Word or whatever, but then, there are people like me who are fed up with all those false hits such in-built spellchecking functions produce, and for these such word listing tools like this one are more than handy!

[Curt]

-the program's full name is PageFour - Software for Novelists and Creative Writers and has nothing to do with a personal informations manager.

-------------

Have you tried the 'pro' version of AskSam? I think its search functions may satisfy you.
https://www.asksam.com/brochure.asp . It is merely $395 

[helmut85]

Curt, many people use it as such, and vice versa, many novelists and creative writers could do very well with such a replicating function, too: e.g. for material they'd use here, but then again, believe to use over there, and which ends up not at all in the waste bin, but in a special "to be used later where it goes more smoothly than here" drawer. For all such jumbling around, such a function would be pure gold, but we agree it'd cost more than 40 bucks.

As for AS, I'm one of those AS specialists out there, using it by the non-documented(-any-more) internal search codes, and having used it from day 1 or so (Dos day, I think it was Dos version 2 or 3 - in those days, it even had a macro language implemented that was with its Win 1.0 version and never appeared again), and after helping burying it with my constant criticism of its development having gone bonkers (well, it ended up under the rules of their marketing guy, instead of some serious coding person), I now wish it to be resurrected, less your-material-eating buggy, asap. Btw, it's regularly on bits, for under 100 bucks, but prefer the non-prof version, the prof version's indexing feature (and sole feature it's got over the standard version) causing more serious problems than anything else in this once fine program.

Sorry for this surprise (I suppose), but the good news is, if anybody needs help with AS, I'm willing to assist, now that they even have lost their forum.

Don't laugh: It's the best little-enterprise crm there is ("the best" meaning the most versatile and practical, not the most beautiful) - don't import pictures, don't do real links, just do simili-links processed by your own macros external to AS, don't get over 10,000 customers / prospects, and you'll be rather happy with this program, as extraordinarily buggy as it becomes whenever you try to force its limits. Have it as simple as it gets, internally, and it will let you take big advantage of its architecture.

Today, I said, there's many good coders, but lots of very poor sw design. For AS, it's the opposite: It's genious sw, but must be programmed in a way you'd hung yourself by projective shame if ever you saw its code.

Off-topic: I've always admired your "Norwegian" symbol - earnest: your own, or copied somewhere? Not really important, it's top-class in either case.

[Curt]

Off-topic: I've always admired your "Norwegian" symbol - earnest: your own, or copied somewhere? Not really important, it's top-class in either case.

-sorry, you've lost me. The only thing I can think of, that you may have meant, is the 'picture' of Homer van Gogh / Vincent Simpson?

[wraith808]

-the program's full name is PageFour - Software for Novelists and Creative Writers and has nothing to do with a personal informations manager.

And in that capacity, I've found it top notch.  It helped me get organized enough to actually complete NaNoWriMo- no small help.  It also helped me to realize that source control is key for my writing endeavors as much as my programming endeavors.

[helmut85]

Curt, didn't know "Homer van Gogh" or "Vincent Simpson", but see now it's a pastiche between some of Edvard Munch, as I thought it was, and Vincent van Gogh indeed - learned something new, thank you! (You can't google for pictures if you don't have some search term, now you gave me the search terms needed for finding!)

[Curt]

- learned something new, thank you! (You can't google for pictures if you don't have some search term, now you gave me the search terms needed for finding!)

Now learn something "new": Go to Google Images, drag a copy of my picture and drop it on the search box, and without typing any search terms, you will instantly get this:

[attachimg=#]



or, install Google Reverse Image Search (for Firefox).

[helmut85]

Curt, I have to make an avowal: Immediately after posting my post, I remembered that there is "search pictures by a picture" in google (without having it ever used or even searched for this function, hence my not remembering the function in time), but I was too tired to go back and rectify - which now presents the big advantage of your having layed out this fine google function to a broader audience (well, it's the first-time readers here I'm speaking off: I'm sure regular readers here will have known before). In fact, this feature is extremely dangerous for anybody who tries to adopt, for commercial purposes, graphics / photos that ain't his own, and even clipping / resizing / etc. won't prevent google from finding the original, I've read somewhere. Google is as brilliant as it's invasive! ;-)

[wraith808]

- learned something new, thank you! (You can't google for pictures if you don't have some search term, now you gave me the search terms needed for finding!)

Now learn something "new": Go to Google Images, drag a copy of my picture and drop it on the search box, and without typing any search terms, you will instantly get this:
(see attachment in previous post)

The strange thing is, it's not searching on the image.  I 'edited' my avatar from a different image.  Even though it has been edited (the face removed), it still shows the images for the original image- not the edited one, even though I use it on several sites.

[helmut85]

Interesting info! Somebody with sufficient time and motivation could open up pictures with a text / hex editor and change various lines there, in order to identify "header parts" or such that will prevent google's finding them again, whilst perhaps preserving the original picture, more or less. Variant: don't open the original files, but blow parts of them up, then take a screenshot of details, and save these details as completely new files: This part should work for sure. Then, do the same with bigger parts of the original picture, and see at which size google's recognition function will take in. Two additional probs here: Between tries, you must wait for google to process the thing, to begin with, a very big annoyance here (Upload intermediate results in groups, then wait, then the next: booh!). And, you won't get good quality by blowing up to almost original size, then screenshot the thing. (Or do the screenshot from some of these new high-resolution Apple screens.)

Results could make a good journal article, though.

[tomos]

- learned something new, thank you! (You can't google for pictures if you don't have some search term, now you gave me the search terms needed for finding!)

Now learn something "new": Go to Google Images, drag a copy of my picture and drop it on the search box, and without typing any search terms, you will instantly get this:
(see attachment in previous post)

The strange thing is, it's not searching on the image.  I 'edited' my avatar from a different image.  Even though it has been edited (the face removed), it still shows the images for the original image- not the edited one, even though I use it on several sites.

You can get in trouble that way
I presume it's still got a thumbnail of the original in the file somewhere courtesy the editor. I dont remember exactly why that often doesnt get updated, or what the solution is. Was mentioned here on dc a while back (maybe by Shades?) but I wouldnt even begin to know where to look (here).

[helmut85]

It's an interesting subject indeed, as soon as we presume they use, more or less / more from (than we thought) of the underlying code of pictures, and not so much ai checking those pictures from the outside. But if we were totally right (which we are probably not: they'd do a combination of both, I suppose), once a picture is "screenshot" and restored from there, they wouldn'd recognize it anymore, and I think they're a lot smarter than that.

Also, when manipulating the underlying "text", the question is, will the thing you'll have got after that manipulation, be a real picture, or will it be a pseudo-picture, i.e. recognized as a picture, by google, but not open anymore in a viewer (since it's become "defective" in the process, or then not?).

Any google insiders here willing to speak?

[Curt]

I am certainly no 'google insider' or techie, but I use the feature in mention every day, so I can speak from experience. And I really think that Google uses an advanced but otherwise identical technique as any desktop "Find duplicate or similar photo"-program.

[helmut85]

Having thought about it, I think we have just a few standard "formats", meaning, just a few very standardized ways of encoding any possible 2-dimensional sequence of color and brightness values, from which is no way out, by way of screenshots or something, since the moment you save your screenshot or any "processed" photo, it will again be re-encoded the very same way, producing very similar results, by way of the encoding algorithm to be followed without any "fuzzy" deviations. You change colors: stays similar. You change brightness values: stays similar. It's only when you change forms that you'll get a really different, new encoding, but then your photo will not remain similar. And as for details, similar, they're just sub-part of the code. Which means the internal encoding of bitmaps (photos are (perhaps a special form of) bitmaps, I suppose) is much more similar to the internal encoding of vector graphics than I'd ever thought. And from that on, photo search becomes "easy": No ai needed to look upon the photo from the outside, they recognize it from the inside, so to speak, by its particular (and astonishingly little variable) coding structure and the sub-parts hereof.

[Curt]

accessory: Smart Edit ("Editing Software for Novelists & Creative Writers") - for any editor.

-such an editor could be Tree Notes 3, coming on sale tomorrow at Bits du Jour for $10 instead of the normal $45: http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/tree-notes (homepage: http://www.dextronet.com/tree-notes).
Notize: "Tree Notes 3", not "TreeDBNotes".

[xtabber]

In an article in the current issue of The New Yorker magazine, John McPhee says that the only writing environment he has used since beginning to use a computer in 1984 has been the Kedit text editor.

Kedit has been my favorite editor for even longer than that, and Kevin Kearney is indeed, as McPhee describes in the article, a delight to talk with, but I will admit that Kedit is not what I would choose for writing. But then, I can't write like John McPhee.

[helmut85]

xtabber, very interesting mention, so I started a new thread.

[Curt]

I am very fond of the humble PageFour ("Software for Novelists and Creative Writers"). Now the same company, (Bad Wolf Software, Manchester, U.K.), has launched a stand-alone piece of accessory: Smart Edit ("Editing Software for Novelists & Creative Writers") - for any editor.

However, the price is $70, so I haven't yet tested it...

-but today only (Wednesday 27 November 2013) the price is a mere $19  

http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/smartedit

We’ve improved SmartEdit a lot over the past 11 months, and now we want to spread the word as far and as wide as we can. With more and more writers deciding to self-publish, and many of those writers choosing to skimp and save when it comes to editing, software like SmartEdit is becoming more and more important.

But editing software might not be for you. Each writer writes in a different way, and what helps one may not help another. If you find SmartEdit useful, or if you think your fellow writers might find it useful, we’d love it if you would tell others about it.

SmartEdit is a first-pass editing tool that helps you to edit your work by highlighting up to 20 areas that may need improvement. With SmartEdit, you’ll be able to detect whether you’ve overused a word or phrase, gone too far with adverbs, or mistakenly used a common misspelling. What’s more, SmartEdit is also smart enough to examine sentence structures for length, possibly incorrect punctuation, or inconsistent use of quotation marks.

Now mind you, SmartEdit is not going to make your work better from a content perspective. That’s entirely up to you! But what SmartEdit can do is to make you more critical of your work from a technical viewpoint, giving you the ability to make the entire document stronger, more professional, and ready for review by a real-world editor!

[tomos]

There is a new version of SmartEdit for Word:

[attachthumb=#]

http://www.smart-edit.com/gallery/smarteditforword-mainwindow.html

(I'm not a user of SmartEdit, just on their mailing list)