A command-line interface for creating and interacting with Distant Reader study carrels

Installation

  pip install reader-toolbox

Quick start

  # configure; accept the default
 rdr set -s local
  # add an item to your library
  rdr download homer
  # read homer
  rdr read homer
  # list all words
  rdr ngrams homer
  # list all bigrams
  rdr ngrams homer -s 2
  # list all bigrams and count them
  rdr ngrams homer -s 2 -c
  # search
  rdr concordance homer
  # search again, but specify a query
  rdr concordance homer -q war
  # list subject-verb-object fragments; please be patient
  rdr grammars homer
  # list noun phrases
  rdr grammars homer -g nouns
  # cluster; do the items in the carrel group themselves?
  rdr cluster homer
  # topic model; similar to cluster but with more detail
  rdr tm homer
  # page through additional carrels for downloading
  rdr catalog -l remote -h
  # download another carrel
  rdr download pride
  # download yet another carrel
  rdr download sonnets
  # list your carrels
  rdr catalog

Description and background

The Reader Toolbox -- run from the command-line as rdr -- is designed to create and interact with Distant Reader study carrels. Using the Toolbox you can do things such as but not limited to:

search and browse the collection of more than 3,000 publicly available study carrels
download study carrels from the public collection and add them to your own collection
count & tabulate the most frequent ngrams (one-word, two-word, etc. phrases) occurring in study carrels
apply concordancing (keyword-in-context searching) against study carrels
apply topic modeling (extracting latent themes) against study carrels
extract information from your study carrels matching specific grammars
create your own study carrels
and more

In the end, the Toolbox empowers you to read, use, and understand large volumes of text quickly and easily.

Installation

Quick start

Description and background

Links