muWords

Dan Mailman

2026-05-22

Language

English Lexical Input Demo

muWords

Overview

muWords is an English lexical-input design built from BNC frequency data. This page uses a browser/server demo only as a reference rendering of the interaction model. The design claim is the ranked lexical grid, prefix navigation, and shortpress/longpress grammar, not JavaScript or server architecture.

The current package uses the accepted P/k prefix strategy from ENGLISH_MULEX_GRIDSPEC_JSON. Each grid represents a prefix P; a cell's key indicator k names the child prefix Pk. Common lexical candidates stay visible as shortpress actions, while longpress opens the corresponding child prefix when that key also has deeper choices.

Layer Compiler GridPack Demo renderer
Role Filters BNC rows and assigns P/k actions Stores manifest, shards, displays, and actions Renders the live reference demo for review

The hosted route below serves the compiler-generated MUWORDS_BNC3000_GRIDPACK package. That route is a practical demo vehicle, not the intended final implementation form of the input method.

Interactive Demo

The live surface below is a reviewable reference rendering served by the hosted muWords GridPack server route.

Interaction Model

muWords demonstrates the same duration-sensitive lexical selection idea as the Mandarin GridPack demos, applied to English word and phrase candidates. A user works from a compact grid, chooses common words directly, and follows prefix branches when a target is deeper in the ranked lexicon.

In the current English package, shortpress generally sends the displayed lexical item. When the same key also has a deeper prefix branch, longpress opens that branch. For example, home key a shortpresses the exact one-letter lexeme a and longpresses to grid a; on grid a, key b shortpresses a ranked-fill candidate while longpress opens grid ab. Branch-only cells use shortpress to open the child grid.

The Typing Area shows the text being composed. The Behind the Scenes panel is a teaching and review aid: it exposes current prefix state, pending gesture state, and the last interpreted action so committee readers and interviewers can inspect how the design works. A production input method could hide most of that diagnostic panel.

Compiler Strategy

The English compiler starts from the BNC all.num.txt word/POS frequency list, keeps clean alphabetic words and clean underscore phrases, collapses duplicate surface forms, and selects the current BNC3000 candidate scope. Emitted surfaces may contain spaces, as in a bit, while navigation keypaths use only alphabetic characters, as in abit.

The P/k rule keeps the grid regular enough to explain and measure: exact Pk lexemes pin to key k, singleton descendants can be sent directly from the parent cell, remaining cells are filled by frequency order under P, and lower-ranked words are reached by recursive Pk branching rather than ordinary next-page grids.

Dissertation Context

For the dissertation, muWords is evidence that the muLex design can separate three concerns: language-specific lexical data, a portable grid/action representation, and the user-facing interaction model. The English page is not a hand-maintained special case; it uses a generated manifest-plus-shard package to make the design inspectable.

For committee review and academic job-search conversations, the demo makes the research claim inspectable: a compact prefix algorithm can map a ranked English lexicon onto a duration-based grid interface while still leaving the interaction legible to someone seeing the system for the first time.

Current Design Notes

  • The Quarto page embeds a hosted reference renderer at https://danmailman.net/muWords/embed/.
  • The hosted health route is a demo-maintenance check that reports the active MUWORDS_BNC3000_GRIDPACK package.
  • The current package covers 3000 selected BNC candidates across 2676 grids and 25 shards.
  • The accepted compiler strategy is the P/k prefix model: grid P, key k, child prefix Pk.
  • The browser/server stack is used here for review and publication of the demo, not as a claim about the final app implementation.
  • The page does not copy GridPack packages, shard files, server source, or runtime JavaScript into this repo.
  • The legacy Grid_Spec_APPL_Eng_3000.csv and app.js path is superseded but retained for reference during review.
  • Local-only server preview instructions remain in the repo documentation, not in the public page body.