pymesomake 0.2.1

An implementation of the mesostic generation algorithm Andrew Culver developed for John Cage.

PyMesomake

PyMesomake is a Python 3 implementation of the mesostic generation algorithm Andrew Culver developed for John Cage.

Installation

Windows

I only use Windows for testing in my projects but these instructions work for me on a vanilla Windows 10 virtual machine:

0. If you don't already have Python on your system download and install the the current release from python.org}(https://www.python.org/)

1. Open a command line and run the command

pip install pymesomake

MacOS

Linux

Unless you've previously used Python's Natural Language Tool Kit you'll see this error on your first run of PyMesomake.

LookupError: 
**********************************************************************
  Resource punkt not found.
  Please use the NLTK Downloader to obtain the resource:

  >>> import nltk
  >>> nltk.download('punkt')

  Attempted to load tokenizers/punkt/PY3/english.pickle

  Searched in:
    - '/Users/erictheise/nltk_data'
    - '/Users/erictheise/Repos/erictheise/venvs/pymesomake/nltk_data'
    - '/Users/erictheise/Repos/erictheise/venvs/pymesomake/share/nltk_data'
    - '/Users/erictheise/Repos/erictheise/venvs/pymesomake/lib/nltk_data'
    - '/usr/share/nltk_data'
    - '/usr/local/share/nltk_data'
    - '/usr/lib/nltk_data'
    - '/usr/local/lib/nltk_data'
    - ''
**********************************************************************

You can download that component with:

$ python -m nltk.downloader punkt
[nltk_data] Downloading package punkt to
[nltk_data]     /Users/erictheise/nltk_data...
[nltk_data]   Unzipping tokenizers/punkt.zip.
$

Usage

python pymesomake --sourcefile='data/genesis.txt' --mesostring="these are the times that try men's souls"

Reminder to Maintainer

Publish thusly:

$ python setup.py sdist bdist_wheel
$ twine updload dist/*

Acknowledgements & Resources

Andrew Culver

• post to silence mailing list that inspired this code
• compilation of computer programs used by John Cage

The Holy See

• source of Genesis text. HTML source subjected to these minimal edits:
  • removal of page navigation elements
  • removal of chapter headings (e.g., "Chapter 6") and line numbering (e.g., "[1:30]")

Marjorie Perloff contextual essays

• John Cage Conceptualist Poet
• The Music of Verbal Space: John Cage’s “What You Say”