Wordstream

Wordstream is a cool tool that helps you play around with text associations. Basically, when you feed it some text, it builds up a list of word connections from left to right for each word. So, when we talk about words here, we mean all those bits of text that sit between spaces. You can think of the corpus like a big stack of words that you can pull from whenever you want!

How Wordstream Works

The Wordstream package has two main ways to interact with the corpus: through the wordstream and dissociate interfaces. There’s also room to dream up more uses for it!

The Wordstream Interface

This is where the magic happens! It's an interactive way to munch on and feed your corpus. You can use a command line interface called wordstream, or if you prefer something more visual, there's a web interface too! Just run paster serve wordstream.ini. Once you're in, type in your lines of text. The cool part? Wordstream will 'eat' what you've fed it and give you back some fun responses while adding your input into its memory.

Dissociate Interface

This one's named after Emacs' M-x dissociated-press, and it's pretty neat! The dissociate feature will take documents, mix things up (shuffle those word stacks), and then let the corpus eat itself up! It randomly picks words, munches on their connections, and goes deeper until there’s nothing left to munch on! You can access this via command line as well—just install the software and type dissociate --help. Or use paster serve dissociate.ini.

Potential Applications of Wordstream

The beauty of Wordstream's corpus is how simple yet powerful it is. Here are some fun ideas:

• A Thesaurus: By feeding synonyms into Wordstream, it could double as a thesaurus tool! You'd be able to see related words based on how often they show up or where they land in the stack.


• Writing Analysis: The web has tons of content out there. Wordstream could help show what's trending across different sites and what words connect to those topics.


• Collaborative Fiction: Imagine several writers feeding their ideas into one collective corpus through the web interface—all contributing to a shared story by 'eating' each other's words!

If you're curious about trying out Wordstream for yourself, check out this link: Download Wordstream here!