On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 6:17 PM, Cyrille Artho <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > stefano franchi wrote: > >> >> >> >> On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 6:08 PM, Cyrille Artho <[email protected] >> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> >> >> stefano franchi wrote: >> >> >> >> >> On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 5:54 PM, Cyrille Artho <[email protected] >> <mailto:[email protected]> >> <mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>> wrote: >> >> Dear all, >> It looks like in the long term, a grammar-based random >> document >> generator for LyX would be very useful for testing. The >> "grammar" would >> contain rules about how a document looks like: Title, >> authors, >> abstract, sections with subsections and >> text/tables/figures/equations. >> Tables/figures/equations would again be generated by other >> rules. >> >> Of course content does not matter, as long as the result is a >> valid >> .lyx file. For testing, the result would be loaded by lyx and >> saved >> again. This would ensure a document does not get corrupted by >> saving, >> no matter how strange it is. >> >> However, it is a significant effort to build a decent >> document >> generator that is useful for such testing... something that >> may fit for >> GSoC, though. I'll keep this in mind for 2015. >> >> >> Excellent idea, although the sheer variety of things to test >> makes the >> problem hard. Perhaps this would be a good starting point: >> >> http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/__scigen/ <http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/ >> scigen/> >> >> >> S. >> >> Yes, that could be a starting point, although the code may not be easy >> to edit. In any case, we'd need LyX files, and also tables (perhaps >> even equations) that are non-trivial but still syntactically correct. >> >> >> >> >> >> There are a number of automatic paper generators out there, for different >> disciplines (LitCrit, of course, then math, CS, etc). They tend to be >> Perl-based (unsurprisingly) and LaTeX-oriented. It seems doable to >> repurpose and/or integrate some of them toward LyX. Not sure it's a >> GSOC-level project though. >> >> S. >> >> The size of the project depends a bit on the scope (especially on how > complex the documents/tables should be). We shouldn't forget that the > project needs a good test driver, too, which requires generating the right > LyX user actions to save a previously loaded document, and compares the > outputs. (Maybe it is even possible that the first LyX save has to be > loaded and saved again for the output to be "stable", as a document > generator may produce slightly different files than LyX itself.) > > The test driver has to do this many times while catching crashes/timeouts > reliably. So this also takes a few weeks to automate. Add the document > generation itself, and consider everything is done by someone new to the > problem, and it's easy to stretch this to three months, I think. > > Oh, you misunderstood me. My guess was it *can't* be done in three months. Not by an undergraduate-level student, that is. At any rate, I do agree that it is an idea we should keep present for next year's GSOC. Cheers, Stefano -- __________________________________________________ Stefano Franchi Associate Research Professor Department of Hispanic Studies Ph: +1 (979) 845-2125 Texas A&M University Fax: +1 (979) 845-6421 College Station, Texas, USA [email protected] http://stefano.cleinias.org
