Configuration

RedPen’s configuration file consists of two separate blocks. One block configures the RedPen validators and the other lets you override characters and symbols for the input documents.

Configuration file

RedPen has a single configuration file, which contains all the settings RedPen require to work with different types of input documents. The main configuration file is an xml file with a root element of “redpen-conf”. Within this element there are two sub elements named “validators” and “symbols”.

In order to match the default validators and character settings to a target language, such as Japanese or English, we can specify lang and type attributes in the redpen-conf element to override the default character settings.

The validators section specifies which validators are to be loaded by RedPen. Each validator within this section can have their property values overriden.

symbols section overrides the default symbol settings for the target language.

The following is an example of a RedPen 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 cover the configuration of validators in greater detail. The settings for the symbols section are described in Setting symbols.

Validator configuration

The RedPen configuration file contains a “validators” section for registering Validators. RedPen will apply each validator specified in this section to the to the input document.

The following is a sample “validators” section.

<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>

Each validator is configured within its own “validator” element. The “name” attribute of this element specifies the name of the validator, which is essentially the validator’s class name without the trailing “Validator”. Each validator is responsible for checking a particular aspect of the input document. For example, if the “SectionLength” validator is included in the configuration, then RedPen’s DocumentValidator will check the length of each ‘section’ of each input document.

Some validator components can be configured using “property” elements. For example, you can override the maxmimum character count used by the “SectionLength” validator by specifying a “max_num” property. Some validators also have “sub-validators” which can also be configured within the validator section.

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

Setting symbols

The lang attribute of the redpen-conf element determines how various symbols are handled by RedPen. RedPen supports default symbols for “en” and “ja”, which are described in Default Settings for English and Default Settings for Japanese.

The default symbol settings for a target language can be overridden by configuring the “symbols” section of the RedPen configuration file.

The default settings are described in the following sections. Within the symbols configuration section we can use symbol elements to specify which symbols to use when validating documents. Each “symbol” element overrides a character found in the documents.

The following table describes the properties of the 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 example, we can see a symbols section that defines 3 symbols. The first element defines exlamation mark as ‘!’. Then, FULL_STOP defines a period as the character ”.” and specifies that the symbol must be followed by a space. The third element defines comma as ‘,’ and also defines ‘、’ and ‘，’ as invalid comma characters. This is because some characters have equivalent symbolic meanings.

For example, in Japanese both ‘.’ and ‘。’ can represent a FULL_STOP. The invalid-chars setting allows us to restrict which character alternatives are permitted in our documents.

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

Default Settings for English

The following table shows the default symbol settings for English and other latin based documents. In the table, the first column contains the name of each symbol and the second column (Value) shows the symbol’s character value. The columns ‘NeedBeforeSpace’, ‘NeedAfterSpace’ ‘InvalidChars’ indicate if the symbol should be followed by or preceded by a space and the symbol’s invalid characters, respectively.

Symbol	Value	NeedBeforeSpace	NeedAfterSpace	InvalidChars	Description
FULL_STOP	‘.’	false	true	‘．’, ‘。’	Sentence period
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

These settings are used by several Validators such as InvalidSymbol and SpaceValidator. If you want to change the symbol definitions used by these Validators, you can override the settings by adding symbol elements to the symbols section of the redpen configuration file.

Default Settings for Japanese

The following table shows the default symbol settings for Japanese documents. In the table, the first column contains the name of each symbol and the second column (Value) shows the symbol’s character value. The columns ‘NeedBeforeSpace’, ‘NeedAfterSpace’ ‘InvalidChars’ indicate if the symbol should be followed by or preceded by a space and the symbol’s invalid characters, respectively.

Symbol	Value	NeedBeforeSpace	NeedAfterSpace	InvalidChars	Description
FULL_STOP	‘。’	false	false	‘．’,’.’	Sentence period
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

These settings are used by several Validators such as InvalidSymbol and SpaceValidator. If you want to change the symbol definitions used by these Validators, you can override the settings by adding symbol elements to the symbols section of the redpen configuration file.

Japanese Symbol Valiations

Symbols in Japanese has vary by the author and the writing group. RedPen provide the two defalut symbol settings for Japanese. The valiations are specified with type attribute. Currently there are two variation for Japanese symbol settings (“zenkaku2” and “hankaku”).

For example the following is the sample of configuration file for Japanese text with the “zenkaku2” setting.

<redpen-conf lang="ja" type="zenkaku2">
    <validators>
        <validator name="InvalidSymbol" />
        <validator name="SpaceWithSymbol" />
        <validator name="SectionLength" />
        <validator name="ParagraphNumber" />
    </validators>
</redpen-conf>

The symbols of “hankaku” type is the same as the symbol settings as “en.” The symbols of “zenkaku2” is almost the same as normal type of “ja” with the following exceptions.

Symbol	Value	NeedBeforeSpace	NeedAfterSpace	InvalidChars	Description
FULL_STOP	‘．’	false	false	‘.’, ‘。’	Sentence period
COMMA	‘，’	false	false	‘,’,’、’	Comma