Language-aware text editing

While software developers have various power tools at their disposal that make the writing of computer programs more efficient, authors of texts do not have the support of such power tools. Text processors still operate on the level of characters and strings rather than on the level of word forms and grammatical constructions. This forces authors to constantly switch between low-level, character oriented, editing operations and high-level, conceptual, verbalisation processes. We suggest the development of language-aware text editing tools that simplify certain frequent, yet complex editing operations by defining them on the level of linguistic units. Pluralizing an entire noun phrase plus the verb forms governed by it would be an ambitious example, swapping the elements of a conjunctive construction a more modest one. We describe a pilot implementation for German where these operations are seamlessly integrated with the standard functions of an existing open-source editor. The operations can be invoked on demand and do not intrude on the authoring process. Changes can be performed locally or globally, thus simplifying the writing process considerably, and making the resulting texts more consistent