RiTa

RiTa
Original author(s)	Daniel C. Howe
Developer(s)	RiTa Contributors
Stable release	v3.0.2 / January 1, 2022; 2 years ago
Written in	JavaScript, Java
Platform	Cross-platform
Type	Natural Language
License	GPL
Website	rednoise.org/rita/

RiTa is an open-source software toolkit for generative writing and English natural language, originally developed using the Java language by Daniel C. Howe and collaborators, and later implemented in JavaScript as rita.js. Current versions of RiTa (Version 3.0 was released in 2023) are implemented in both Java and JavaScript and integrate with p5.js, Processing, Node and Android.

Features

Heuristic algorithms for inflection, conjugation, stemming, tokenization, etc.
Regex lexicon search to match phonemes, POS, meter, soundex and rhyme patterns
Powerful options for text generation via context-free grammars and Markov chains
Close integration with the writer-oriented RiScript scripting language (interpreted via Antlr)
Feature extraction of phonemes, part-of-speech, syllables and stresses
Letter-to-sound engine for analysis of arbitrary words (with or without a lexicon)

Usage examples

// In JavaScript/Node

let { RiTa } = require('rita');

console.log(RiTa.rhymes('sweet'));

/*[
  'beat',    'beet',
  'cheat',   'cleat',
  'compete', 'complete',
  'conceit', 'concrete',
  'deceit',  'defeat', ...
]*/

let features = RiTa.analyze('The elephant took a bite!');
console.log(features);

/*{ 
  phones: 'dh-ah eh-l-ah-f-ah-n-t t-uh-k ey b-ay-t !',
  stresses: '0 1/0/0 1 1 1 !',
  syllables: 'dh-ah eh/l-ah/f-ah-n-t t-uh-k ey b-ay-t !',
  pos: 'dt nn vbd dt nn !',
  tokens: 'The elephant took a bite !'
}*/

// In Java/Processing

import rita.*;

void setup()
{
    size(100, 200);
    textSize(16);
    fill(0);
  
    String[] words = RiTa.rhymes("sweet");
    for (int i = 0; i < words.length; i++) {
        text(words[i], 20, 20 + i * 18);
    }
  
    println(RiTa.analyze("The elephant took a bite!"));
}

Related projects

Tracery/Bracery by Kate Compton
Nlp-Compromise by Spencer Kelly
Processing (programming language) by Casey Reas and Ben Fry
p5.js by Lauren McCarthy
Twine by Chris Klimas

Projects using RiTa

Zuckifier, 2015. Sam Lavigne
@SortingBot, 2015. Darius Kazemi
The Whole Brilliant Enterprise, 2014. Jer Thorp and the Office for Creative Research
Game Definitions, 2013. Molleindustria
Mirroring Tears: Visages, 2011. John Cayley and Penny Florence
The Readers Project, 2009. John Cayley and Daniel C. Howe

License

RiTa is free, libre and open-source according to the GNU General Public License.

Notes

The name RiTa is derived from the old Norse, meaning to mark, scratch, or scribble.

References

Howe, Daniel C. (2009), RiTa: Creativity Support for Computational Literature (PDF), ACM Press, pp. 205–210^{[permanent dead link‍]}
Howe, Daniel; Soderman, A. Braxton (2009), The Aesthetics of Generative Literature: Lessons from an Electronic Writing Workshop., Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, Visionary Landscapes, Vol. 6., doi:10.20415/hyp/006.e04
Johnston, David J (3 June 2016). Aesthetic animism : digital poetry's ontological implications. Cambridge: MIT Press. p. 188. ISBN 9780262034517.
Cayley, John; Howe, Daniel (2012). How It Is in Common Tongues. Providence: NLLF Press. ISBN 978-0948454301., Limited edition artist book
Jiang, Liangzhong (24 November 2011). Proceedings of the 2011 International Conference on Informatics, Cybernetics, and Computer Engineering (ICCE2011) November 19-20, 2011, Melbourne, Australia. Vol. 3, Computer networks and electronic engineering. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. p. 28,29. ISBN 978-3642251948.
Unsworth, John; Siemens, Ray; Schreibman, Susan (2016). A New Companion to Digital Humanities. John Wiley & Sons. p. 132. ISBN 978-1118680643.

^ "Releases - dhowe/rita". Retrieved 23 December 2023 – via GitHub.

External links

[github-releases-1] "Releases - dhowe/rita". Retrieved 23 December 2023 – via GitHub.

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