Announcing release of Wolf dictionary creation application

[Dan Harvey]

We are pleased to announce the first release of WOLF software for
creating indigenous dictionaries. 

Dan Harvey
Professor of Computer Science
Southern Oregon University
harveyd at sou.edu

WOLF ([W]ord [O]riented [L]inguistic [F]ramework) Version 1.00 Release

This project is an extension of ACORNS ([A][C]quisition [O]f [R]estored
[N]ative [S]peech) which is designed to support tribal efforts to
revitalize language and culture. The acronym is in honor of the tribes
of Northern California who helped to spawn this effort. Among these
tribes the ACORN is sacred, and wolves are considered protectors to this
area. 

The ACORNS project is a long-term development effort involving both
graduate and undergraduate students. ACORNS and WOLF software is free
for download (http://cs.sou.edu/~harveyd and click on projects,
selecting the WOLF project). Developers that wish to make contributions
should contact harveyd at sou.edu

The motivation for WOLF ([W]ord [O]riented [L]inguistic [F]ramework) is
to provide an easy-to-use framework where linguists easily can create
indigenous dictionaries. The interface has an EXCEL feel, but geared for
use by linguists. Each word is a row in the dictionary. Words and
definitions within words can contain additional row and column
sub-cells. 

The software supports, among other things, dictionaries containing up to
one hundred languages, a variety of search and sort facilities, XML
import and export, embedded multimedia, and IPA phonetics. A more
detailed list follows. Future releases will provide apps that run on
mobile devices, plug-in capabilities to support developer enhancements,
automatic speech recognition, dictionary based games, and wiki-like
capabilities for posting dictionaries to the Web.

WOLF Version 1.00 features

As mentioned above, the current WOLF release is designed to have a feel
similar to EXCEL, but geared for use by linguists. We chose this design
because many linguists use EXCEL, despite its limitations for creating
dictionaries.
WOLF version 1.00 supports: 
•	Up to one hundred languages in a single dictionary
•	Unlimited numbers of definitions and examples for a single word
•	Uses the standardized GOLD ontology and ISO language codes
•	Multimedia objects including audio, picture, and video embedded
with words, examples, and definitions
•	Entry of phonetic representations
•	Searching by ontological terms, by category, and by word using
regular expressions
•	Sort facility
•	Import and Export facilities employing XML
•	Entry of the dictionary copyright notice and contacts for
contributing authors
•	Ability to directly record audio and incorporate it into the
dictionary
•	Undo and redo facilities to recover from errors
•	Hard copy printouts

Wolf version 1.00 is a good start, but more work needs to be done. We
list some of the improvements below. We also eagerly seek feedback from
linguists for suggestions that will encourage widespread acceptance of
this package. Developers that want to contribute should contact us at
harveyd at sou.edu

To do list
•	Comprehensive printout of dictionaries using general-purpose
user-defined templates
•	Implementation of a WIKI-like application for creating a Web
presence
•	Applications that run on mobile devices (like a phraselator type
program)
•	Import from and export to other dictionary formats (like EXCEL,
Toolbox, and Lift).
•	Dictionary-based games that can run within WOLF, on the Web, or
on mobile devices
•	Automatic speech recognition and pronunciation verification
capabilities
•	Plugin capabilities to incorporate developer contributions

WOLF, though being freeware, is not yet open source. However, our
intention is to make it so at some point after the software matures.