I recently got the proofs back for an accepted manuscript and had to go about making sure the editors didn’t screw anything up when they typeset the text. One way I’ve done this in the past (idea via Gabrielle!) is to coerce a co-author into helping me read the entire manuscript. Backwards. One conspirator reads the original submitted version and another reads the uncorrected proof, starting from the end, pronouncing every word and every punctuation mark. This is mind-numbingly tedious but it works. The end-to-beginning technique is important because it prevents ‘skimming’ and assuming the content of a sentence without actually verifying it.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a co-author here to waylay, so I’ve used the next best thing (no, not an undergrad): a computer. Below is a perl script which takes as input a text file with one version of the manuscript and outputs the reversed, punctuated version. I abused Adobe to translate the publisher’s PDF into a text file (email it to pdf2txt@adobe.com), which I then manually edited to remove line numbers, etc. After translating it using the script I had MacOSX read it to me while I made notes on the original submitted PDF whenever there was an inconsistency. The new text-to-speech voice, Alex, is actually quite good. In hindsight, the better way to do this would be to use my original LaTeX (tex2txt?) or .doc file as the reversed text and to make notes directly on the publisher’s PDF. Oh well, there will be a next time.
How to use the program:
- save as proofer.pl
- make the code executable: chmod +x ./proofer.pl
- and run as: ./proofer.pl [inputfile]
- the program will output a file [proofed.txt]
- run: say -v Alex < ./proofed.txt
- OR open the output file in a text processing program (e.g. TextWrangler) and choose “Services –> Speech –> Start Reading Text”. You can change the voice and reading speed under “Apple –> System Preferences –> Speech”
use strict;
use warnings;
open FILE, ">proofed.txt" or die $!;
my @array;
while(<>) {
s/\,/ ,comma, /g;
s/\:/ ,colon, /g;
s/\./ ,period, /g;
s/\;/ ,semicolon, /g;
s/\</ than, ,less /g;
s/\>/ than, ,greater /g;
s/\?/ mark, ,question /g;
s/\'/ apostrophe, /g;
s/"/ mark, ,quotation /g;
s/\(/ parenthesis, ,open /g;
s/\)/ parenthesis, ,closed /g;
s/\=/ ,equals, /g;
s/\+/ ,plus, /g;
s/\-/ ,dash, /g;
s/\!/ point, ,exclamation /g;
s/\@/ sign, ,at /g;
s/\#/ sign, ,pound /g;
s/\$/ sign, ,dollar /g;
s/\%/ sign, ,percent /g;
s/\^/ sign, ,caret /g;
s/\&/ ,ampersand, /g;
s/\*/ ,asterisk, /g;
s/\[/ bracket, ,open /g;
s/\]/ bracket, ,close /g;
s/\{/ bracket, ,curly open /g;
s/\}/ bracket, ,curly close /g;
s/\~/ ,tilde, /g;
s/\`/ mark, ,tick /g;
s/\// slash, ,forward /g;
s/\\/ slash, ,back /g;
s/(\r|\f)/\n/g;
s/ a / ,a, /g;
s/ the / ,the, /g;
s/ to / ,to, /g;
s/ in / ,in, /g;
s/[^A-Za-z0-9 ,\n]/ character, ,unknown /g;
push(@array, split,"\n");
}
print FILE join(' ', reverse @array);
close FILE;
Tags: apple · latex · linux · science · script · writing3 Comments
3 responses so far ↓
only you eric. only you….
:D
well of course. if someone else had already done it I wouldn’t have had to ;)
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