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| What is Mac Libs? |
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Mac Libs is a program for the Macintosh for studying grammar in an amusing way.
You can create story templates with "holes" that are filled in with specific
grammatical constructs (like nouns, verbs, etc.) or any arbitrary categories
(like names, colors, etc.). Words can be typed in at runtime or chosen at random
from a dictionary. Grammatical rules can be programmed in a HyperCard-like
language. For example, the "verb past tense" rule will convert any verb to
past tense. If the rules are correct and the appropriate words are chosen,
the generated story will be grammatically correct, though frequently silly,
and always amusing (to me, anyway).
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| How does Mac Libs work? |
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Mac Libs comes with a bunch of ready-made story templates, but you can also
create your own (or modify existing ones) in the story template editor as shown on
the right (click on image to enlarge).
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When you want to generate a story, you choose the template you want, and the
numbers enclosed in the double brackets are automatically replaced with words from
the appropriate word categories. You can also have Mac Libs prompt you to supply
your own words interactively.
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Mac Libs also comes with a bunch of ready-made word categories, but you can
also create your own (or modify existing ones) in the word editor as shown on the
right.
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The word categories can have rules associated with them to transform the
words. The example on the left shows a rule that transforms a verb into the
past participle form. These rules can be applied automatically when a story is
generated. And since no rule is perfect, and many English words have exceptions,
you can assign exceptions to any word for any rule.
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Words categories can also define properties which can be associated with
any word. The rules can test these properties, and story templates can look
for words that have a specific property. For example, you might want your
story to use a verb, but only a verb with the "transitive" property.
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