In order to get the poetry generator to run, you need Python 3. Using bash shell with Python 3, navigate to the download directory and enter python3 generator.py. This will generate a poem from the ASCII input (default input.txt is Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, found in the same directory. This can be changed to any book-length input). This task takes between 15 seconds and 10 minutes depending on your CPU power and the length of the input.

PLEASE NOTE: the generator cannot handle non-ASCII symbols or pound signs. Please replace all of these with spaces before attempting to use it.

The generator contains a main method that calls file = open('input.txt', 'r+'). This by default opens the program named input.txt. If you would like to use various inputs named different things, you would modify this line of the generator. It is found in generator.py on line 349.

Using the app.py file, you can modify the generator to be controlled by a HTTP GET and POST method. This will require Flask to be fully installed on your machine or server. The app.py should be run as the main method, which will imports and calls the generator.py functions themselves. The flask server utilizes the templates folder in order to render the HTML, and then returns the poem as an HTML output with the name of the input file. In order to deploy this application to a server, use a coded flask deployment. It is possible to host it using another flask hosting option (Google apps, etc.), but some deployment methods (e.g. Heroku) have a timeout limit and are not able to host this application as the return method takes quite long to return.

PLEASE NOTE: The ability of the server to run this as a threaded application may require some modification, but this implementation functions fully on a local server with one user.

The report describes the history of the poetry generator, the various forms our generator went through, future concepts and a general observational piece on if computers can truly produce art.