Configuration

RedPen has a configuration file, which has two blocks. One is for validators configuration and the other is for overriding characters and symbols for input documents.

Configuration file

RedPen has one configuration file, which does the all settings needed to work RedPen with input documents. The main configuration file is a xml file which has the root block “redpen-conf” and configuration block contains two sub blocks “validators” and “symbols”.

In order to fit the default validaotrs and character settings for the target language such as Japanese or English, we can specify lang in the redpen-conf attribute to override the default character settings.

The validators block specifies a setting file to add validators, and symbols block specifies the input language such as en, ja and the character setting file.

symbols block override the default symbol settings of target language.

The following is an example of main configuration file.

<redpen-conf lang="en">
    <validators>
        <validator name="SentenceLength">
            <property name="max_len" value="200"/>
        </validator>
        <validator name="InvalidSymbol" />
        <validator name="SpaceWithSymbol" />
        <validator name="SectionLength">
            <property name="max_num" value="2000"/>
        </validator>
        <validator name="ParagraphNumber" />
    </validators>
    <symbols>
         <symbol name="EXCLAMATION_MARK" value="!" invalid-chars="！" after-space="true" />
         <symbol name="LEFT_QUOTATION_MARK" value="\'"  invalid-chars="“" before-space="true" />
    </symbols>
</redpen-conf>

In the next section, we will see the configuration of validators. The character settings are described in the Setting symbols section.

Let’s go into the details of validator configuration.

Validator configuration

RedPen configuration file contains “validators” block for registrating Validators. If a user adds a validaor for one checking point into validator-conf.xml, then RedPen applies the added Validator to the input document.

The following is the sample validators block.

<validators>
    <validator name="SentenceLength">
        <property name="max_len" value="200"/>
    </validator>
    <validator name="InvalidSymbol" />
    <validator name="SpaceWithSymbol" />
    <validator name="SectionLength">
        <property name="max_num" value="2000"/>
    </validator>
    <validator name="ParagraphNumber" />
 </validators>

All configurations are surrounded by one “validator” block, which contains many inner component blocks. Each inner “component” block represents a validator, which checks one aspect of the input document. For instance, adding “SectionLength” component block into the configuration file, DocuemntValidator checks the length of sections in input documents.

As we see some components have “property” to configure the validator specific settings. For example, the “SectionLength” validator has maximum character number in one section. Some validator has sub-validators.

We will see the all the supported validators in the Supported Validators page.

Setting symbols

Default settings of symbols is provided by language, the target language is specified in the redpen-conf attribute, lang. RedPen supports defualt symbols for “en” and “ja”, which are described in English Default Setting and Japanese Default Setting.

To override defult setting of symbols defined for the target language, Users can add configure settings for characters and symbols with “symbols” block in the RedPen configuration file.

Default settings are described in the following sections. In the symbols configuration block, we add the symbols to use in the document. The symbols block has multiple symbol elements. “symbol” element overrides the character used in the written documents.

The following table is the properties of symbol element.

Property Mandatory Default Value Description
name true none Name of the symbol
value true none Value of the symbol
before-space false false Need space before the symbol
after-space false false Need space after the symbol
invalid-chars false “” List of invalid symbols

Sample: Setting symbols

In the following setting, we can see that symbols has define 3 symbols. First element defines exlamation mark as ‘!’. Second element , FULL_STOP defines period as ”.” and in addition the sybmol need space after the period. Third element defines comma as ‘,’ and also define invalid symbols ‘、’ and ‘，’. Here invalid symbols represents the variations of the target symbol. For example, In japanese FULL_STOP can be not only ‘.’ but also ‘。’. If we registered invalid-chars, we can prevents the mixture usages of symbol variations.

<symbols>
    <symbol name="EXCLAMATION_MARK" value="!" />
    <symbol name="FULL_STOP" value="." after-space="true" />
    <symbol name="COMMA" value="," invalid-chars="、，" after-space="true" />
</symbols>

English Default Setting

The following table shows the default symbol settings for English and other latin based documents. In the table, first column shows the names of symbols, second colums (Value) shows the symbol character. Colums ‘NeedBeforeSpace’, ‘NeedAfterSpace’ ‘InvalidChars’ represent that the symbol should have space before or after the symbol and the invalid symbols respectively.

Symbol Value NeedBeforeSpace NeedAfterSpace InvalidChars Description
FULL_STOP ‘.’ false true ‘．’, ‘。’ Period of sentence
SPACE ‘ ‘ false false ‘　’ White space between words
EXCLAMATION_MARK ‘!’ false true ‘！’ Exclamation mark
NUMBER_SIGN ‘#’ false false ‘＃’ Number sign
DOLLAR_SIGN ‘$’ false false ‘＄’ Dollar sign
PERCENT_SIGN ‘%’ false false ‘％’ Percent sign
QUESTION_MARK ‘?’ false true ‘？’ Question mark
AMPERSAND ‘&’ false true ‘＆’ Ampersand
LEFT_PARENTHESIS ‘(‘ true false ‘（’ Left parenthesis
RIGHT_PARENTHESIS ‘)’ false true ‘）’ Right parenthesis
ASTERISK ‘*’ false false ‘＊’ Asterrisk
COMMA ‘,’ false true ‘、’,’，’ Comma
PLUS_SIGN ‘+’ false false ‘＋’ Plus sign
HYPHEN_SIGN ‘-‘ false false ‘ー’ Hyphenation
SLASH ‘/’ false false ‘／’ Slash
COLON ‘:’ false true ‘：’ Colon
SEMICOLON ‘;’ false true ‘；’ Semicolon
LESS_THAN_SIGN ‘<’ false false ‘＜’ Less than sign
GREATER_THAN_SIGN ‘>’ false false ‘＞’ Greater than sign
EQUAL_SIGN ‘=’ false false ‘＝’ Equal sign
AT_MARK ‘@’ false false ‘＠’ At mark
LEFT_SQUARE_BRACKET ‘[‘ true false   Left square bracket
RIGHT_SQUARE_BRACKET ‘]’ false true   Right square bracket
BACKSLASH ‘’ false false   Backslash
CIRCUMFLEX_ACCENT ‘^’ false false ‘＾’ Circumflex accent
LOW_LINE ‘_’ false false ‘＿’ Low line (under bar)
LEFT_CURLY_BRACKET ‘{‘ true false ‘｛’ Left curly bracket
RIGHT_CURLY_BRACKET ‘}’ true false ‘｝’ Right curly bracket
VERTICAL_VAR ‘|’ false false ‘｜’ Vertical bar
TILDE ‘~’ false false ‘〜’ Tilde
LEFT_SINGLE_QUOTATION_MARK ‘’‘ false false   Left single quotation mark
RIGHT_SINGLE_QUOTATION_MARK ‘’‘ false false   Right single quotation mark
LEFT_DOUBLE_QUOTATION_MARK ‘”’ false false   Left double quotation mark
RIGHT_DOUBLE_QUOTATION_MARK ‘”’ false false   Right double quotation mark

The symbol setting are made use of seveal Validators such as InvalidSymbol, and SpaceValidator. If users want to change the symbol configuration settings. Users can override the settings adding symbol element into the symbols block in the redpen configuration file.

Japanese Default Setting

The following table shows the default symbol settings for Japanese documents. In the table, first column shows the names of symbols, second colums (Value) shows the symbol. Colums ‘NeedBeforeSpace’, ‘NeedAfterSpace’ ‘InvalidChars’ represent that the symbol should have space before or after the symbol and the invalid symbols respectively.

Symbol Value NeedBeforeSpace NeedAfterSpace InvalidChars Description
FULL_STOP ‘。’ false false ‘．’,’.’ Period of sentence
SPACE ‘　’ false false   White space between words
EXCLAMATION_MARK ‘！’ false false ‘!’ Exclamation mark
NUMBER_SIGN ‘＃’ false false ‘#’ Number sign
DOLLAR_SIGN ‘＄’ false false ‘$’ Dollar sign
PERCENT_SIGN ‘％’ false false ‘%’ Percent sign
QUESTION_MARK ‘？’ false false ‘?’ Question mark
AMPERSAND ‘＆’ false false ‘&’ Ampersand
LEFT_PARENTHESIS ‘（’ false false ‘(‘ Left parenthesis
RIGHT_PARENTHESIS ‘）’ false false ‘)’ Right parenthesis
ASTERISK ‘＊’ false false ‘*’ Asterrisk
COMMA ‘、’ false false ‘，’,’,’ Comma
PLUS_SIGN ‘＋’ false false ‘+’ Plus sign
HYPHEN_SIGN ‘ー’ false false ‘-‘ Hyphenation
SLASH ‘／’ false false ‘/’ Slash
COLON ‘：’ false false ‘:’ Colon
SEMICOLON ‘；’ false false ‘;’ Semicolon
LESS_THAN_SIGN ‘＜’ false false ‘<’ Less than sign
GREATER_THAN_SIGN ‘＞’ false false ‘>’ Greater than sign
EQUAL_SIGN ‘＝’ false false ‘=’ Equal sign
AT_MARK ‘＠’ false false ‘@’ At mark
LEFT_SQUARE_BRACKET ‘「’ true false   Left square bracket
RIGHT_SQUARE_BRACKET ‘」’ false false   Right square bracket
BACKSLASH ‘￥’ false false   Backslash
CIRCUMFLEX_ACCENT ‘＾’ false false ‘^’ Circumflex accent
LOW_LINE ‘＿’ false false ‘_’ Low line (under bar)
LEFT_CURLY_BRACKET ‘｛’ true false ‘{‘ Left curly bracket
RIGHT_CURLY_BRACKET ‘｝’ true false ‘}’ Right curly bracket
VERTICAL_VAR ‘｜’ false false ‘|’ Vertical bar
TILDE ‘〜’ false false ‘~’ Tilde
LEFT_SINGLE_QUOTATION_MARK ‘‘’ false false   Left single quotation mark
RIGHT_SINGLE_QUOTATION_MARK ‘’’ false false   Right single quotation mark
LEFT_DOUBLE_QUOTATION_MARK ‘“’ false false   Left double quotation mark
RIGHT_DOUBLE_QUOTATION_MARK ‘”’ false false   Right double quotation mark