Text Speak ⇒ English

This essay does not describe an existing computer program, just one that should exist. This essay is about a suggested student project in Java programming. This essay gives a rough overview of how it might work. I have no source, object, specifications, file layouts or anything else useful to implementing this project.

This project outline is not like the artificial tidy problems you are spoon-fed in school, when all the facts you need are included, nothing extraneous is mentioned, the answer is fully specified, along with hints to nudge you toward a single expected canonical solution. This project is much more like the real world of messy problems where it is up to you to fully the define the end point, or a series of ever more difficult versions of this project, and research the information yourself to solve them.

Everything I have to say to help you with this project is written below. I am not prepared to help you implement it; or give you any additional materials. I have too many other projects of my own.

Though I am a programmer, I don’t do people’s homework for them. That just robs them of an education.

You have my full permission to implement this project in any way you please and to keep all the profits from your endeavor.

This is a very simple project. Have you ever received an email from someone with a cell-phone who texted you a message with his thumbs? “plz tell me wot u wanna l8r dew 2nite.”. To the uninitiated, it is unintelligible gibberish. Your job is to write a program to convert it into standard English.

The simplest version of this program is just a list of phrases that you replace by their English equivalent e.g. u becomes you. In more sophisticated versions, you tidy up the capitalisation and spelling generally. In truly sophisticated versions you treat this as you would translating French into English, with analysis of grammar.

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