I have decided to call the input to the translator "Tinkertoy Text"; I think that the term does a good job of indicating the idea. Let's hope Laura, Cathy, et al think so too. They'll probably recommend every other variation of toy in Toys R Us.
The editor is now in place and my task for this essay is to figure out how to assist the storybuilder with spellchecking. Two areas of spellchecking seem appropriate: text variable name checking, and grammar checking.
The first of these requires us to compare all typed names with the list of acceptable names. The trick here is recognizing and correcting typos. How can I recognize "SubectNom" as "SubjectNom"? Jeez, I know this algorithm should be fairly standard, but how does it work? Some sort of pattern recognition... how about a set of moving filters of different sizes, sweeping over the text string, looking for matches with standard strings? Let's use the above example. The single-character filter would get 9 matches out of ten; the two-character filter would get 7 matches out of 9; the three-character filter would get 5 matches out of 8; and so on. Yes, this could really work. And the storybuilder could get away with typing contractions of the words, and it would recognize them. Nice work, Chris.
When is spellchecking done? I think that the appropriate time is when we leave a textedit box or change display or verb; that is, anytime we stop editing. And I suppose that it should be automatic, not optional; after all, we simply will not accept misspelled text variables.
Now, what about grammar checking? First, I have to specify the rules: balanced braces, balanced brackets, at least one pipe inside each bracket pair, But what about carriage returns and outer appositives? Use percent signs? I don't see how to do it.