[Lexicog] dictionary software

[Koontz John E]

On Sun, 21 Mar 2004, Kenneth C. Hill wrote:
> The Hopi Dictionary Project used (and I continue to use) a DOS program
> called Notebook II, by a now-defunct company called Pro/Tem Software.
> Notebook II is the best software I have yet discovered for dictionary
> making, but it works only in a DOS window and uses only ASCII characters.
> It might work on a Mac if one has Soft-PC.

The Comparative Siouan Dicitonary project looked at Notebook and another
program called AskSAM that was somewhat similar.  We ended up using
AskSAM, which still seems to be around, amazingly enough.  I think we
picked one over the other because of factors like amenability to handling
extended character sets, absolutely essential to us, but I'm no longer
sure.  I remember Notebook looked very nice.  Anyway, ultimately we were
mostly handling the text files in something like SIL's SFM with various
programmer's text editors.

What you say about field stucturing and searching in Notebook applies in
AskSAM, though the interface in AskSAM is less tabular and perhaps in that
way less appealing for a number of purposes.  The output and formatting
expedients were the same.  We used AWK programs in the CSD.

Both of the packages were examples of what were called textbase programs.
I think Notebook was theoretically aimed at the "personal information
maager" market, while AskSAM seemed to be intended to handle things like
legal briefs.  In the end you could use both somewhat like Shoebox in a
period before Shoebox existed.  My suspicion is that someone who wanted to
use something like one of these programs at present would be better
advised to look at Shoebox, which has much the same facilities and more of
a purpose-built dictionary orientation.

Incidentally, the SAM in the name AskSAM seems to stand for IBM's SAM
structure for file management - Sequential Access Method - more standard
databases often use or used to use ISAM or "Indexed SAM."  I think
relational tables were stored as SAM Or ISAM files.




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