Additions to the readme

[stanographer]

• Users may have difficulty understanding "This script relies on PLY: http://www.dabeaz.com/ply/" as it too high level for non-developers. It doesn't explain really the concrete steps necessary to get it working. Right now, I'm directed to a page with a zip file download I have no idea what to do with.

Maybe adding something like: "use the command pip install ply to make sure this dependency is installed. If you do not have pip, then use sudo easy_install pip to install."

• Instructions for how to invoke the converter lacks specific placement of the source rtf file in the invocation syntax. Currently, the instruction reads "python convert_rtfcre_to_json_dict.py > output_dict.json 2> report.txt." I didn't know if the program just looked for an rtf file in the same directory, or if you had to specify the name of it somewhere in the command. Through trial and error I figured out that what I wanted was "python convert_rtfcre_to_json_dict.py stan-main.rtf > stan-main.json 2> report.txt." I spent quite a while adding >s and/or adding/deleting spaces before I got it right.

The sample invocation should include where to point to the original: "python convert_rtfcre_to_json_dict.py ORIGINAL.rtf > CONVERTED.json 2> report.txt, where ORIGINAL is the source file and CONVERTED is the dictionary file converted to json, and report.txt is the error log output, should any arise during the conversion process."

I'm hoping these additions will make it less confusing for future users of this highly useful little app!

-S

[balshetzer]

Hi Stan,

Thanks for the feedback.

I am curious why you needed to do this conversion since Plover now supports .RTF dictionaries.

Thanks,
Hesky

[stanographer]

Because when I add things containing meta-characters i.e. speaker entries or formatting entries, it won't always define correctly. Like, when I go back, it'll have extraneous spaces and such added where I had never intended there to be. However, if I open the dictionary in Atom or something and manually add the entry, it usually works. Also, when I define things using non-standard Roman characters such as accented letters, Plover crashes. I'm CARTing an Italian class right now and every time I wrote a word with è or something in it, Plover would die :[.