manuscript-tools 0.5.0

Validation, sanitization and metrics for Markdown manuscripts.

manuscript-tools

A QA toolkit for German Markdown manuscripts. Validates style, sanitizes encoding, converts quotation marks, and measures readability.

Deutsche Version | Wiki

Installation

pip install manuscript-tools

Or as project dependency:

poetry add manuscript-tools

Commands

Command	Description
ms-check	Style checks (5 core rules, --strict adds 3 prose rules)
ms-sanitize	Fix encoding, strip invisible chars, normalize Unicode
ms-quotes	Convert quotation marks to German typographic style „ " ‚ '
ms-metrics	Word counts, sentence analysis, Flesch-DE readability score
ms-validate	Full QA pipeline (sanitize + quotes + check + readability)

Quick start

# Full QA pipeline
ms-validate manuscript/

# Style check only (core rules)
ms-check manuscript/

# Style check with prose analysis (filler words, passive voice, sentence length)
ms-check manuscript/ --strict

# Readability report
ms-metrics manuscript/

# Fix quotation marks (dry-run)
ms-quotes manuscript/ --dry-run

Rules

Core (always active):

no-dashes, no-invisible-chars, no-repeated-words, no-double-spaces, non-german-quotes

Prose (with --strict or ms-validate):

max-sentence-length, filler-words-de, passive-voice-de

Custom rules are simple callables with the signature (text: str, path: Path) -> list[StyleViolation]. See the Wiki for a step-by-step tutorial.

Configuration

Configure via [tool.manuscript-tools] in your pyproject.toml:

[tool.manuscript-tools]
rules = ["max-sentence-length"]          # merge with defaults
disable = ["passive-voice-de"]           # remove from active set
max-sentence-words = 30                  # default: 40
flesch-target = [65, 80]                 # warn if outside range
filler-words-extra = ["definitiv", "absolut"]  # extend filler list

No config = all defaults. rules merges with defaults (union). disable removes from the active set and takes precedence over rules. See the Wiki for details.

Readability

ms-metrics computes the Flesch-DE reading ease score (Amstad, 1978) with German-optimized syllable counting. Score interpretation:

Score	Level	Typical use
80-100	Very easy	Children's books
60-80	Easy to medium	Fiction, non-fiction
30-60	Difficult	Journalism, academic
0-30	Very difficult	Legal, scientific

Development

git clone https://github.com/astrapi69/manuscript-tools.git
cd manuscript-tools
make install-dev
make ci          # lint + format check + 112 tests

Documentation

Full documentation is available in the Wiki:

• Installation and Setup
• Usage
• Writing Custom Rules
• Integration into Projects
• Publishing to PyPI
• Development and CI
• FAQ
• Quick Start for Book Projects
• Configuration

License

BSD 3-Clause. See LICENSE.