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Muzamba · 07-09-2010, 09:27 AM

It's definitely getting there.

Here are my observations on the most recent build.

While the results are more structurally-realistic than they were in the first build, I think the table content is causing a lot of the output to sound rather silly and implausible. The primary culprit is Table4. The nouns really need to be toned down considerably. Relatively few of the words in this list would have been used in naming locations during the era that most American cities were founded.
Some sort of tagging system still needs to be applied in order to better match concepts. This is especially true of Tables1 and 2 combining with Table3. For instance, the more descriptive prefixes like "Blue" and "Cold" would normally be followed by a noun from Table4, but not a name or proper noun from Table3.
Even though they're not very common, there should probably still be a second title suffix table (Table7?) for cities like "Salt Lake City", "Thief River Falls" and "Hot Springs Village".
Adding a second set of title prefixes, however, was a smart move. I forgot about places like "North Little Rock", "New Port Richey" and "Fort St. John". (However, they still need to be grouped appropriately with tags.)
This isn't a big deal if it's too inconvenient or impractical, but would it be possible to allow the user to control the frequencies of table combinations? (I've always been of the mindset that the more the user can customize, the better.)
Finally, on a personal note, is there any way you code the new GUI to accept Windows colors? I'm sure this won't be a problem for most, but because of my Windows settings, the list output shows up as white text on a white background on my computer. I can see them when they're highlighted, but not otherwise. (I have my colors inverted due to a vision problem.)

One thing that I think would really help, once all the programming has been completed, would be to compile statistics on place names. Some of the numbers still seem a little off to me, but I'd rather use accurate frequencies than to speculate on the numbers myself.

Anyway, like I said, this program is coming along nicely. A few more tweaks and content revisions and I think it'll be perfect!

Thanks again and keep up the great work!

07-09-2010, 09:27 AM	#19
Muzamba Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: St. Louis, MO Posts: 2,325	It's definitely getting there. Here are my observations on the most recent build. While the results are more structurally-realistic than they were in the first build, I think the table content is causing a lot of the output to sound rather silly and implausible. The primary culprit is Table4. The nouns really need to be toned down considerably. Relatively few of the words in this list would have been used in naming locations during the era that most American cities were founded. Some sort of tagging system still needs to be applied in order to better match concepts. This is especially true of Tables1 and 2 combining with Table3. For instance, the more descriptive prefixes like "Blue" and "Cold" would normally be followed by a noun from Table4, but not a name or proper noun from Table3. Even though they're not very common, there should probably still be a second title suffix table (Table7?) for cities like "Salt Lake City", "Thief River Falls" and "Hot Springs Village". Adding a second set of title prefixes, however, was a smart move. I forgot about places like "North Little Rock", "New Port Richey" and "Fort St. John". (However, they still need to be grouped appropriately with tags.) This isn't a big deal if it's too inconvenient or impractical, but would it be possible to allow the user to control the frequencies of table combinations? (I've always been of the mindset that the more the user can customize, the better.) Finally, on a personal note, is there any way you code the new GUI to accept Windows colors? I'm sure this won't be a problem for most, but because of my Windows settings, the list output shows up as white text on a white background on my computer. I can see them when they're highlighted, but not otherwise. (I have my colors inverted due to a vision problem.) One thing that I think would really help, once all the programming has been completed, would be to compile statistics on place names. Some of the numbers still seem a little off to me, but I'd rather use accurate frequencies than to speculate on the numbers myself. Anyway, like I said, this program is coming along nicely. A few more tweaks and content revisions and I think it'll be perfect! Thanks again and keep up the great work!