Meta-question about FLEx

[Beth Bryson]

I'll try to add some information in reference to some of the comments below.  Many of the answers are, "It's coming."

1. Interoperability.  I may not be understanding this, but the goal is that the LIFT format would be one that a number of tools could import and export.  And it is possible to interact with the FLEx data structure using Python.

2. Open Source.  The project is technically open source, although in practice that hasn't happened.  If someone wants to participate in developing it, there is a very steep hill to climb, but the possibility is there.  

3. Time alignment.  Efforts are underway to modify the model for texts to include a place to store the time alignment information.

4. Collaboration.  It is currently possible for more than one user to use FLEx at the same time over a network.  (Maybe Clare's comment was about how well this works, rather than the existence of the possibility?)  And efforts are underway to allow remote syncing of the database.  It is currently possible to do this remote syncing using WeSay, and between WeSay and FLEx.  Work is underway for more than one FLEx user to sync in that way.

5. The attempt was to be as theory-neutral as possible.  The goal was to make it "easy for linguists".  If there are specific places where it feels particularly theory-specific, have you interacted with the developers about how those places could be more neutral?

6. OS.  There is a beta version of FLEx on Linux, and there are users currently using that.  There have been discussions about whether to try to make the Linux version also work on Mac.

7. Lightweight.  It isn't lightweight, but certainly FW 7 requires far less disk space and processing power than FW 6 did.  It is being used successfully on Netbooks, and recently there was an experiment in running it on a version of Linux booted from an SD card on a Netbook.

This is not to say that the concerns raised are not concerns.  But there are at least partial answers to most of the points raised.

-Beth

On Oct 11, 2011, at 4:25 PM, Claire Bowern wrote:

> Given that we're talking about FLEx, I have a more general question for list members. FLEx is billed by those who like it as the new standard for language description software. But at the same time, this program seems to fly in the face of many of the ideals for language description software that fieldwork technologists have been advocating. I'm thinking of articles like Bird and Simons' "7 dimensions of portability for language documentation". Flex is not interoperable, it's not based on open source, it doesn't preserve material on import (e.g. time-alignment), it's impossible to use collaboratively, and it builds the descriptive model into the software in the name of 'ease of use for non-linguists', so it's not theory-netural (whatever that means anyway).
> Does this mean that we've just given up on goals like interoperability, open access and collaboration? Or are we recognizing that the ideal software tool for language description just doesn't exist, and FLEx optimizes enough of the process that we are willing to live without the more abstract and intangible goals like interoperability?


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