Antidote Integration

[Mirko1978]

Hi,

 

First of all kudos for Affinity Publisher. For a first Beta, it's absolutely impressive.

One feature that I really need in order to consider replacing Quark and InDesign with Affinity Publisher is the integration with Antidote (https://www.antidote.info) – and I'm pretty sure that many users who work regularly with french text will agree.

Is anything planned?

 

Thx

[Thomas-B]

I totally agree with this. I work daily with Antidote.

[nomi02118]

Agree 1000%! 

[garrettm30]

I just stumbled onto this thread, and I am happy to see fellow Antidote users in this forum. I suspect we are a rather small minority, so I never even bothered mentioning it as a feature request. Although I don’t feel right claiming this is a “must have” feature, for my own work, I don’t know what I would do without it.

I think the impetus for integration rests more with Druide than it does with Serif (although it would surely require Serif’s cooperation). On the Antidote website, they do invite this kind of feedback:

Quote

If you would like us to integrate Antidote with other software, please contact us.

They may not be interested in integrating with a beta, but once Affinity Publisher goes public, I do intend to contact them. Here’s the link for anyone interested:

https://www.antidote.info/en/contact (English)

https://www.antidote.info/fr/contact (French)

[Freid]

+1

[Martin-M]

Hi dear Publishers!

Any news regarding Antidote integration? Since Affinity Publisher went public, I beleive Antidote to be a must-have, since it would benefit both English and French publishers!

Let's face it: who can publish a book without this kind of integration? That's why I'm reviving this post.

I contacted the Druite/Antidote team, and they suggest contacting the Affinity Team first. A first step made the Affinity team seems to be a prerequisite to start the Antidote integration!

Let's keep this request alive, so that hope remains!

Cheers!

[garrettm30]

On 4/11/2020 at 6:02 AM, Martin-M said:

I contacted the Druite/Antidote team, and they suggest contacting the Affinity Team first.

In fact Druide has reached out to Serif, and Druide does seem eager to make compatibility a reality. For example:

In that thread, they were invited to continue discussions via email, but we do note that TonyB ("Top Cat") said:

On 5/3/2019 at 7:25 AM, TonyB said:

I have put it on the official list. 

 

[Alex de Kyburg]

Hi, mai 2022... still no Antidote integration in Affinity Publisher?

[Old Bruce]

2 hours ago, LondonSquirrel said:

It's not the best example of a sentence for improving your writing. 😁

I think this is a better example, if not the best example, from the same site. Made me think I had had a stroke.

"After spelling and grammar, correct typography and style, including repetitions and dull verbs."

[Guest]

Poor copywriting on their website aside, the application itself is indispensable to many folks who write and publish in both English and French.

I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss it just because you’ve never heard of it and their website copywriting leaves a lot to be desired.

[Guest]

The original topic of this thread was concerning the request for Antidote support in the Affinity products. I’m not sure how the Antidote marketing copy is relevant to that request.

FWIW Antidote already supports the Adobe apps. If Serif really are “the next generation of professional publishing software” (their marketing copy) integrations such as these are essential for many folks.

[Guest]

I’m sure everyone here has a list of features that they consider more important than many of the features that you feel are essential.

Anyway, once again I’m regretting that I bothered to engage with this ‘community’. Ciao!
 

[PaoloT]

2 hours ago, Bryan Rieger - Inactive said:

Anyway, once again I’m regretting that I bothered to engage with this ‘community’. Ciao!

The community is fine. Some members, in particular if specialized in trolling, can find an excellent place in the Ignore list.

Paolo

 

[garrettm30]

Hi all,

Not that any defense of Antidote is really necessary in the context of an Affinity forum, but I have found Antidote so very helpful over the years that I feel it worth a little time to put in my “two cents” on its behalf.

First, it may be helpful to know that French is Antidote’s forte, and in fact it supported French only until English was added more recently. It seems that most of us (if not all) who are asking for integration are using it for French. Despite Druide’s very hard work, it may be that their English side has not yet come to the same level of maturity, though from what I have seen there is tremendous value in even the English side.

Knowing that this software starts with French can also explain the nature of the text on the website, as it almost certainly started in French (and translations, for those who do not know, can often read like translations, depending on the skill of the translator and how freely he is permitted to amend the text for the benefit target language). For example, the sentence Old Bruce pointed out makes more sense to me in its French original: “Après l’orthographe et la grammaire, corrigez la typographie et le style, dont les répétitions et les verbes ternes.”

The problem is with the use of the word “correct” in English, and that brings me to the point of what Antidote is and what it is not. The Antidote corrector* is a tool and a resource, but it is not an editor. It helps identify numerous errors of the sort that computer programs can be good at: think not only spell-check but things such as conjugations and agreement, both of which are more complex in French than in English and so mistakes are easy to make and overlook in proofreading. These kinds of mistakes are not corrected by spell-check alone but are something that computer software can be good at. What people in this thread have drawn attention to are matters of style, and there, it is harder to make software do a good job. Antidote does offer tools of style, such as identifying repetitions, excessive passive voice, etc., but it can’t really tell you whether a sentence reads correctly. That is where human editors come in.

*(The corrector is only part of Antidote. Not to forget that the value of the resource side of Antidote is massive and replaces multiple expensive printed volumes on several grammatical, lexical, and stylistic matters, but the integration with Affinity mostly has to do with the corrector.)

Let’s return to the problem sentence identified by Old Bruce:

Quote

After spelling and grammar, correct typography and style, including repetitions and dull verbs.

As a computer program, Antidote could understand that as a perfectly grammatical sentence. But as humans, we find it awkward because of the ambiguity of the word “correct,” which is spelled identically as either an adjective or as a verb (here as a 2nd person imperative).

If it is an adjective, it has this meaning:

After spelling and grammar, typography and style that are correct, including repetitions and dull verbs.

If that is the meaning, then there is no verb in the sentence. As our mind goes along, it encounters a hiccup of understanding where it may well be inclined to first parse “correct” as an adjective and then stumble with an incomplete sentence and have to back up and try again by understanding “correct” as a verb:

After spelling and grammar, make corrections to typography and style, including repetitions and dull verbs.

Indeed, the French original makes clear that “correct” is to be understood as a verb, for in this case there is no ambiguity between “typographie et style corrects” and “corrigez la typographie et le style.” So in this case, a less literal translation would aid in removing the ambiguity for the sake of readability, and Antidote can serve as a helpful resource, but only to a skilled editor who knows how and when to use it as such.

But now, if I may return the discussion to how Affinity relates to Antidote: it is admitted that those who use both Antidote and Affinity (especially Publisher) are comparatively few, and so it makes sense that we could not, in my view, reasonably expect Serif to go to great lengths to specifically accommodate Antidote.

But that is not really what we need. Instead, we need and are asking for some general framework by which third-party integrations may be made possible. That could be with a plugin system, or it could even be with scripting (which, as you know, has been one of the longtime hot requests), so long as it is built in such a way that it can call external scripts and receive their results.

This thread about Antidote really only represents one specific use case for a general framework where countless niche requirements among the many various use cases could be met.

[Alfred]

11 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

Indeed, the French original makes clear that “correct” is to be understood as a verb, for in this case there is no ambiguity between “typographie et style corrects” and “corrigez la typographie et le style.” So in this case, a less literal translation would aid in removing the ambiguity for the sake of readability

In this case, a more literal translation would have been helpful. If they had written “correct the typography and the style”, the inclusion of the definite articles would have made it perfectly clear that “correct” is to be understood as a verb.

[garrettm30]

9 minutes ago, Alfred said:

In this case, a more literal translation would have been helpful.

Quite right, and thank you for pointing it out. I always enjoy your comments on language, even those you label as “pedantry” (or perhaps especially those).

[Alex de Kyburg]

Wow! What a strange way to answer to my question... 🙃
Yes, Antidote started with french speaking Canadian people! And I do mostly use french versions of apps (when possible). So, the équation is not about the english speaking people juge the way Antidote's website is like in english, but simply IF THE TEXTS typed in Photo, Designer and Publisher would SOMEDAY be open to be analysed WITHIN the apps WITHOUT HAVING TO BE COPY-PASTED in TextEdit. 😵‍💫
Spécial thanks to garrettm30, who seems to be the one who anderstands what my équation is about.

P.S. This was written without the help of Antidote nor any IA... 🤪

[Pšenda]

39 minutes ago, Alex de Kyburg said:

french speaking Canadian people

I'll just follow up - as a non-French-speaking user who doesn't even live in Canada, I'm asking Serif not to favor narrow user groups over others, and to leave the stated requirements until the functionalities are added or bugs are removed that will be appreciated by "all" users or at least most of them. Thank you.

[Alex de Kyburg]

😅 Antidote has been developped by "french speaking Canadian people"... but is used by THOUSANDS of french writing people ALL OVER the world... 💐

[PaoloT]

2 hours ago, Pšenda said:

as a non-French-speaking user who doesn't even live in Canada, I'm asking Serif not to favor narrow user groups over others

2 hours ago, Alex de Kyburg said:

😅 Antidote has been developped by "french speaking Canadian people"... but is used by THOUSANDS of french writing people ALL OVER the world... 💐

As a non-French speaking Canadian, not even living in Canada, I make heavy use of Antidote, a fundamental tool for linguists. So I would ask not to favor the opinion of pedantic people not even understanding what they are fighting against.

Paolo

 

[Guest]

22 minutes ago, PaoloT said:

As a non-French speaking Canadian, not even living in Canada, I make heavy use of Antidote, a fundamental tool for linguists. So I would ask not to favor the opinion of pedantic people not even understanding what they are fighting against.

As a primarily English speaking British-Canadian who relies on Antidote each and everyday (both in Canada and the UK, for English and French), I can't agree with @PaoloT more strongly.

[Alex de Kyburg]

Gosh! I’m sorry that my question led to such a partisan controversy. That wasn’t my point. I was just wondering if Connectix would soon provide to the Affinity suite an integration equivalent to those for Scrivener, TextEdit, Pages, Mail and Keynote... 
 

[AlainP]

I agree with you that integration of Antidote would really be a plus to the Affinity Suite.

I've been using it for years, mostly in French, but also in English. It's an invaluable tool for documents creation and correction. It's really more powerful and useful in French documents but does a decent work in English. But like all these tools you need to have quite a good knowledge of the language and its grammar.

Reading some useless posts here... reminds me why I don't use this forum as I used to. 

[PaoloT]

Just now, AlainP said:

Reading some useless posts here... reminds me why I don't use this forum as I used to. 

The Ignore function is unfortunately a bit hidden. You can reach it by touching the avatar of the annoying member. The forum becomes a lot cleaner after that.

Paolo

 

[garrettm30]

Thank you for your comments. I would like to suggest this minor tip in regard to what you said here:

On 7/28/2022 at 9:23 AM, Alex de Kyburg said:

WITHOUT HAVING TO BE COPY-PASTED in TextEdit.

Pasting into TextEdit is one extra step than needed. You need only copy from Publisher (or from wherever) and then use the “Copy corrected text” command (or its shortcut) from Antidote’s menu bar menu. I guess it depends on which platform you are, but this is what I am referring to (from Druide’s manual):

Quote

In Windows, the Connectix Agent can be found in the notification area, next to the clock. On a Mac, it is in the menu bar. In both platforms, it is represented by a small Antidote flask icon.

It’s still a big difference from the integration we are asking for, but maybe one fewer step will help until better things come along.

And for those that seem to think we are asking for Serif to cater to a niche group, please understand we are not really asking for Serif to provide Antidote integration but rather a general API for third-party integration, so Druide can do their part, as they have already indicated they are willing to do. This way, many different niche and not-so-niche needs can be met while Serif moves on to other things.