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This could have been easily done in software and it probably was


From the guide's FAQ:

  03. What program did you use to justify the text?

      None. I just chose words carefully so that everything lined up on the
      right hand side. Everything was done with an ASCII editor.


Which software?


I don't think it exists. Perhaps we should create it.

I manually justify paragraphs of monospace text the exact same way all the time, for my code and git commits. It's an added cognitive burden that should ideally be automated by M-q in Emacs or something.

With WordNet we can get a good thesaurus for permuting words. Combine that with CMUDict and IsleDict and we can even reshape the text into something like iambic pentameter.


A thesaurus won't work. There are not many true synonyms around; often, synonyms change the meaning of the word, or interact with the meaning of the context. You also need to change inflections, word order, prepositions, and sometimes the sentence and discourse structure to make a good fit, while maintaining the consistency of vocabulary and readability throughout the current context. It's quite a complex task.




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