Madlang DSL for generating random text

This is the Madlang DSL for generating text. You specify a template, and Madlang will create randomized text from the template.

Madlang is an interpreted language, written in Haskell. It runs from the command line, but also provides a Haskell library that can be integrated into other projects, compiled to a web app, or used as an EDSL.

There is also a vim plugin for syntax highlighting, available here.

It can be used for twitter bots (among other things) and provides human-readable syntax for generating text.

Examples

An example is worth a thousand words, so suppose you wanted to generate a mediocre fortune telling bot. You could write the following code:

:define person
    0.7 "A close friend will "
    0.3 "You will "
:define goodfortune
    0.2 person "make rain on the planet Mars"
    0.8 "nice things will happen today :)"
:define fortune
    0.5 "drink a boatload of milk"
    0.5 "get angry for no reason"
:define intense
    1.0 person "wrestle in the WWE".to_upper
    1.0 person "bite in a bottle of hot sauce".to_upper
:return
    0.7 person fortune
    0.1 intense
    0.2 goodfortune

Syntax

There are two keywords in madlang you'll use most: :define and :return. :return is the main string we'll be spitting back; there can be only one per file. :define on the other hand can be used to make functions. These functions are combinations of templates, organizing pairs of weights and strings.

There is a Shakespearean insult generator demo available in demo/shakespeare.mad

Installation

Releases

Nix

If you're on linux or mac, you can get up-to-date binaries via nix.

Download nix with

curl https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh

From there, nix-env -i madlang will install the proper executables.

Stack

Download stack with

curl -sSL http://haskellstack.org | sh

Then run stack install madlang --resolver nightly and you'll get the madlang executable installed on your path. This may take a bit of time, as it will build all dependencies of madlang first.

Use

To use it, try

 $ madlang run demo/shakespeare.mad

You can do madlang --help if you want a couple other options for debugging.

Using the Haskell library

One function you might want to use is runFile; it reads a file and generates randomized text:

 λ:> runFile [] "demo/shakespeare.mad"
 "Thou hasty-witted gleeking puttock!"

To use the library as an EDSL, there are two options: splicing in a file or using a quasi-quoter, viz.

demo :: IO T.Text
demo = run
    $(madFile "demo/shakespeare.mad")

demo :: IO T.Text
demo = run [|madlang
:define f
    1.0 "heads"
    1.0 "tails"
:return
    1.0 f|]

Haddock documentation of all library functionality is located here.

Syntax Highlighting

Syntax highlighting for the DSL is provided in the vim plugin here. It includes integration with syntastic.