`mkv-this` makes some of the features of the excellent [markovify](https://github.com/jsvine/markovify) module available as a command line tool. i started on it because i wanted to process my own offline files the same way [fedibooks](https://fedibooks.com) can process mastodon toots. then i published it to share with friends. i'm a totally novice coder, so you are a programmer and felt like picking it up and improving on it, then by all means!
`mkv-this` is a script that outputs a bunch of bot-like sentences based on a bank of text that you feed it, either from a local text file or a URL, and saves the results to a text file. if you run it again with the same output file, the new results are appended after the old ones.
* an additional file or URL to use for text input. you can add only one. if you want to feed a stack of files into your bank, use `mkv-this-dir` (see below).
if for some reason you want to get a similar funtionality with `mkv-this`, you can easily concatenate the files yourself from the command line, then process the resulting file:
you need to input plain text files. currently accepted file extensions are `.txt`, `.org` and `.md`. it is trivial to add others, so if you want one included just ask.
feed `mkv-this` large-ish amounts of well punctuated text. it works best if you bulk replace/remove as much mess as possible (code, timestamps, HTML, links, metadata, stars, bullets, lines, tables, etc.), unless you want mashed versions of those things in your output. (no need to clean up the webpages you input though!)
you’ll probably want to edit or select things from the output. it doesn't rly output print-ready boilerplate bosh, although many bots are happily publishing its output directly.
you may already have python installed. if not, install [homebrew](https://brew.sh/#install), edit your PATH so that it works, then install `python3` with `brew install python3`. if you are already running an old version of `homebrew` you might need to run `brew install python3 && brew postinstall python3` to get `python3` and `pip` running right.
* option to also append input model to a saved JSON file. (i.e. `text_model.to_json()`, `markovify.Text.from_json()`). that way you could build up a bank over time.