mkv-this 0.1.24

markovify user-provided text and output the results to a text file.

disclaimer:

i wrote this cli rapper for the markovify python module because i wanted its features to be available as a cli tool.

i only published it in case someone who actually knows what they're doing felt like picking it up and improving on it. (and to share it with friends.)

maybe functionality already exists somewhere, but i couldn't find it.

so if unlike me you are actually a programmer and are interested in expanding/correcting/fixing my non-programmer's code, then by all means!

mkv-this

mkv-this is a little script that outputs a bunch of bot-like sentences based on a bank of text that you feed it. the results are saved to a text file. if you run it again with the same output file, the new results are appended after the old ones.

a second command, mkv-this-dir (see below) allows you to input a directory and it will read all text files within it as the input.

mkv-this simply makes some of the features of the excellent markovify python module available as a command line tool. it was written by a total novice, so you probably shouldn’t download it. i only learned about argparser yesterday, and pypi.org today, no matter what day it is. tomorrow i might learn about os and sys. and then maybe even cookiecutter!

installing:

install it with pip, the python package manager:

python3 -m pip install mkv-this

or

pip install mkv-this

to do this you need python3 and pip. if you don't have them, install them through your system's package manager. on debian (+ derivatives), for example, you'd run:

sudo apt install python3 python3-pip

markovify is also a dependency, but it should install along with mkv-this.

macos

it seems to run on macos too.

you may already have python installed. if not, you first need to install homebrew, edit your PATH so that it works, then install python3 with brew install python3. if you are already running an old version of homebrew you might need to run brew install python3 && brew postinstall python3 to get python3 and pip running right.

you can check if pip is installed with pip --version, or pip3 --version.

i know nothing about macs so if you ask me for help i'll just send you random copypasta from the interwebs.

options:

the script implements a few of the basic markovify options, so you can:

• specify output file (default = "./mkv-output.txt")
• specify a maximum sentence length, in characters.
• specify how many sentences to output (default = 5)
• specify state size, i.e. the number of preceeding words to be used in calculating the probability of the next word (default = 2).
• specify the amount of (verbatim) overlap allowed between your input text and your output text.
• specify that your text's sentences end with newlines rather than full-stops.
• specify an additional file to use for text input. you can add only one. if you want to feed a stack of files into your bank, use mkv-this-dir.
• if a second file is added, you can also specify the relative weight to give to the two files.

run mkv-this -h to see how to use these options.

mkv-this-dir: markovify a directory of text files

mkv-this can only take two files as input material each time. if you want to input a stack of files, use mkv-this-dir. it allows you to specify a directory and all text files in it will be used as input material.

if for some reason you want to get a similar funtionality with mkv-this, you can easily concatenate some files yourself in bash, then process them:

• copy all your text files into a directory
• cd into the directory
• run cat * > outputfile.txt
• run mkv-this on your newly created file: mkv-this outputfile.txt
• this approach has the benefit of creating a file with encoding that mkv-this can certainly handle.

file types accepted:

you need to input plain text files. currently accepted file extensions are .txt, .org and .md. it is trivial to add others, so if you want one included just ask.

for best results:

feed mkv-this large-ish amounts of well punctuated text. it works best if you bulk replace/remove as much mess as possible (URLs, metadata, stars, bullets, etc.), unless you want mashed versions of those things in your output.

if your input text doesn’t use full-stops to mark the ends of sentences, try putting each 'sentence' on a newline, and then write to the maintainer of this package to complain about how that option isn't yet implemented. then the parser wont read your entire file as one big sentence and output nothing.

you’ll probably want to edit the output. it is very much supposed to be a kind of raw material rather than print-ready boilerplate bosh, although many bots are happily publishing such output directly. you might find that it prompts you to edit it like a bot yourself.

for a few further tips, see https://github.com/jsvine/markovify#basic-usage.

happy zaning.