Nova the Easy-Peasy Do-It-Yourself Text Aligner

[ital2]

Last comment on Bits for that: http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/nova-text-aligner-2/in=search-for-software :


"The page linked as "Website" above goes into length criticising the competition, stating (my wordings here) that the automatisms there (sentences, paragraphs) do it wrongly, and then you must do it manually anyway, and thus, with Nova, which forces you to do it manually to begin with, that's the real way to do it. The page states this manual way of doing it in Nova is a simple as it gets, but it doesn't tell us HOW this process is facilitated by Nova; also, and with all due respect, I would like to know WHERE the alleged advantage of Nova (except for the price of a mere 10$ of course) over the competition lies, since logically, even if the manual processing in Nova is easy/simple:

If some of the automated competitors do 8 new paragraph dividers right and 1 wrong, I immediately see this on screen, from the faulty length - this being a big difference with for example OCR where I would need to read the whole text attentively, in order to look up processing errors -, I put the mouse cursor there, then either delete the faulty paragraph divider, or insert the missing one - also, I firmly believe that such a mistake will not occur once a page with the automated competition but perhaps once every third or fourth page or the like -; at the same time, with Nova, I must put in all the 9 dividers of my example manually, be that easy or not.

So from what I conceive, Nova just seems to be grossly inferior to its competitors and does not present the alleged - and NOT explained - advantage over its competition at all, but I'd welcome any pertinent information.

Would it be too harsh to say that from what I read from the current text on the linked page, it seems that text tries to turn a big disadvantage into a feigned advantage, hoping readers will not grasp the amount of additional work they will have to do in Nova, over what they would have to do with some competitor's tool? Fact is, I read that text with interest and then had to realize it didn't answer any of my questions but just built up something I felt like being allegedly illusionary expectations in order to blur my discernment."


Referring to this page: https://nova-text-aligner.soft112.com/ : "NOVA Text Aligner is a tool designed to make manual text alignment as easy and simple as possible. It doesn't use any automatic paragraph or sentence alignment algorithms. Why? Because there are things where a human can not be replaced and parallel text editing is such a thing." and blah blah blah on that matter - no comment from the developer.

Please note the logical bomb in the little text cited: He states that there is no alignment (!) automatism in his tool, and for justifying this, he claims "a human can not be replaced" in "parallel text EDITING" (my formatting): In order to justify his not having done his homework for step 1, he pretends no tool of this kind could help with step 2, and you might agree that these steps are clearly distinct, for once.

Would you buy software from a developer who's so deeply at war with logic? Or am I too harsh here? ;-)

[cranioscopical]

From someone whose focus is text, I find this error in the second paragraph of the blurb to be a little disturbing... "you'll have to go trough the whole text". (https://nova-text-aligner.soft112.com/)

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@cranoscopial: I had not even seen that typo, but your discovery is just another hint at developers to run some spelling checker at the end (most Germans do so, and then their texts are full of "sie" instead of "Sie", and vice versa, "sie" being "they" and "Sie" being "your"...).

As for the work this aligner obviously isn't willing to do, of course there are dots, "full stops", at the end of sentences, but also after abbreviations, but after most abbreviations, the next word begins with a lower case letter; most sentences begin with an uppercase one, and as for ^r^n, ^r and ^n, which, especially for text downloaded from the web, create havoc for any script, I first normalize them to ^n, then run the script, then normalize them to ^r^n; any aligner should do so, too, instead of trying to cope with all 3 variants at the same time which is unsuccessful anyway.

Then, there are lengths, German and French being some 10 or 15 p.c. longer than the corresponding English text in most cases for example, so an aligner, while taking such differences into account, should compare character counts, too, before deciding if a dot is a full stop (new sentence; new visual "paragraph" on screen then if the users opts for that) or not; other simple tricks could apply, too, and then you minimize errors of such a tool, in this really simple task.

Btw, it's debatable if the systematic left block - right block paradigm is really optimized for every use case, I'd prefer the sentences being one beneath the other, then a blank line, the two "blocks" being distinguished by different color, but it's perfectly conceivable there be aligners who do it that way already.

But anyway, the developer in question obviously makes a lot of fuss around a (what's more, very simple) core task of any aligner, AND tries to "sell" that miss as an advantage of his tool, on top of this. Also, there is no mass market for aligners, so he faces prospects who should be able to see this them misleading of his, and that makes it all the less comprehensible even. ;-)

[Curt]

what's the fuss about? The program has not been updated for at least 4 maybe 6 years. Forget it!

Also, in it's own tiny (microscopic) field it is a fine program, doing the job well. Surprised? You're annoyed because the description is wrong. Understand what's about, and you will hate it less. You will of course never get to love it, but that doesn't matter too much to any one, when a program has been abandoned for that long.

The app's job is to keep sections being sections - keep sentences being sentences - not to align one line to another line. So the definition is wrong - and that is of course a problem.

[Curt]

the Bits du Jour offer has been taken down (because of the soft112 price, I think), but is up again, now.

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Curt, re-read the developer's page, where he claims that his competitors do, but badly, what we can see on your screenshot, whilst his tools doesn't do it, so according to that page, what we see on the screenshot, will have been done by hand.

Either that, or the developer dumps his own tool, by more than just grossly misdescribing it; as said, re-read his own page; there's nothing on "lines", and about ysour "doing the job well", why then the developer goes into lengths, justifying it NOT doing it, when you say it does it? Wouldn't that qualify for craziness, from the part of the developer himself?

Anyway, the Bits price was 10 bucks, it's now 14 bucks on Bits, as a permanent offer, and I convene with you that if it does what it's originally expected to do, it'd be even worth the 26 bucks you mention - if the user's able to free his mind of what he's read from the developer, and of what he will invariably have deducted from that.

You seem to try to defend the developer, whilst in fact you charge him with insanity - or then I totally misread what he wrote. Fact is, invited to comment on this on Bits, he chose to remain silent.

Weird, wouldn't you agree?

And "hate" is something totally different; I had mentioned it for its spectacular weirdness only, and you add to it. ;-)

[Curt]

you're right in that I am between two chairs. I bought it to see what it all was about - the trial from the homepage said "trial has expired" already at first launch - and now I don't know what to do with it. I am not going to translate a book, or anything similar...

I don't think any of the advertising text were written by the original software author. I am guessing, he authored the app and went away. Now someone else is trying to make money out of it.