Last year, I discovered Suno, generative-AI for music. I found it a bit of fun writing lyrics and having it do the rest. So the syntax for was immediately a source of inspiration for me. It allows you to put comments within the lyrics to specify how the stanza will be read — such as adlib or female voice. And the other features are having asides that could be lyrics that are read in the background or another voice instead.
Because PoetWrite is supposed to be accessible, I kept the syntax as simple as possible. And to allow some flexibility when it comes to the rhetorical analysis.
There are just three features:
Text — Anything that is just plain text is considered part of the poem.
Aside — Text that is surrounded by parentheses ( and ) will be ignored by the analysis. For example, that word (or words) will not be counted as syllables in the counting or ignored in the rhyming pattern calculation.
Note — Anything with brackets [ and ] won't be considered part of the text at all and ignored by PoetWrite completely. These can be used for commenting on the poem.
⛅ Stanzas will likely be based on separated empty lines similar to how Markdown handles paragraphs.
We are going to (really) sing this song. [A Comment Here]
^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
aside note
The scheme above is translated into a set of entities that will be mostly used for PoetWrite's computations.
These are the preliminary entities.
A Poem represents the entire corpus of the text seperate by lines of text. Each line starts with a Line which has a set of Nodes. Those can be either a Note or Aside or Words. These neatly map to the syntax features mentioned earlier.
Words include the entire text in the part that it represents, and go down further with a list of Word entities.
⛅ My plan was to initially put the results of the analyses into this structure which would be powerful for optimization, but a nightmare to manage as text changes. I went for a cached analysis paradigm which are cached outside of this structure.
Using the example above, this is the outcome.
I'm currently just using ANTLR to do the parsing with a simple grammar in the Poem.g4 markup.
📩 RSyntaxTextArea is what I'm planning to use for syntax-highlighting. It has its own token system that I will have to write specifically for.
📩 Graceful error handling will be a crucial feature, especially in something dynamic where editing text is done in real time and need graceful degradation.
[Title - Fixated]
[This is a song that I wrote on my 'time of the month' days.]
[Verse 1 - Male and Female Duet]
Petrified, by my mind's reflections.
Horrified, by my spirit's ruminations.
Bewitched, by my psyche's obsessions.
Locked, in my head with no refuge.
[Verse 2 - Female Voice]
How can I live?
When eventual is unpredictable?
When bygone is unforgettable?
When present is depletable?
[Verse 3 - Rap]
The sky is painted with (really) vivid darkness.
The sounds are aery with (many) insipid harshness.
I cannot rest while my consciousness (oh-oh)
vies to dim the dimmest of blackness.
[Pre-Chorus - Adlib]
How am I to become?
When my own will not fight to outlive my nightmares,
to attain my ambitions?
[Synth Solo]
[Chorus - Repeat Twice]
Fixated, I am,
in the likeness of a glacier moved only by the ocean's currents
melting away day by day
destined to no longer exist. (I won't)
[Bridge - Fading Male Voice]
The past is gone by, when will I forget?
Only when my anima no longer is!