[Lexicog] News and Offers from TshwaneDJe

[Kenneth C. Hill]

Jan--

Unfortunately my knowledge of Shoebox is second-hand. I have worked with people who use Toolbox and have seen that it is quite a challenge to get started with. And I understand that the learning curve with Toolbox's successors from SIL have an even steeper learning curve. My experience with TshwaneLex is that it's pretty easy to get started. And when you change your mind mid-stream, it's easy to make serious formatting changes.

TshwaneLex is fairly mouse-intensive. This is partly a result of its hierarchical structure, which is one of its great strengths, as I have come to understand from a colleague who is much more knowledgeable about data structures than I am.

My experience prior to TshwaneLex has been with an old DOS database, Notebook II, whose latest and final version is 1992. It has no mouse capacity at all and its hierarchical structure depth is but 1: database - field, but it has served me well and I know haw to do many important things there that I have yet to find out how to do in TshwaneLex. The Hopi Dictionary database (33,494 records as of today) remains in Notebook II for the time being.

I'm still very much a beginner with TshwaneLex and still have not experimented with importing data. So far, I've simply been typing in material. I've started with Serrano, the Californian Uto-Aztecan language, on which I did my 1967 dissertation, and with Tübatulabal, another Californian Uto-Aztecan language, from published material by C.F. Voegelin.

--Ken

--- On Thu, 3/19/09, Jan F. Ullrich <jfu at lakhota.org> wrote:

From: Jan F. Ullrich <jfu at lakhota.org>
Subject: RE: [Lexicog]  News and Offers from TshwaneDJe
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Date: Thursday, March 19, 2009, 3:55 AM











    
            







Dear Ken, 

   

Thank you for your review of TshwaneLex. I was very interested in
reading it. 

About four years ago and seriously considered moving from
Toolbox to TshwaneLex but after very careful consideration I didn’t. 

My main problem was the data entry procedure which I felt was
significantly more time consuming and complex in TshwaneLex, since adding
fields is a hierarchical process involving mouse clicks and dialog boxes. In
this regard I love the simplicity of Toolbox especially since I can create an
entry and enter data pretty much without touching the mouse. And I never really
had a problem keeping the filed hierarchy consistent in toolbox. But Toolbox
has its shortcomings, so I keep checking the new developments of TshwaneLex and
wondering whether or not it is time to move our dictionary database to that
software, especially for the sake of those features that Toolbox lacks. 

Would you be able to share your perspective on the data entry process
in TshwaneLex in comparison to Toolbox? And do you know if they made the data
entry process less mouse oriented? 

   

Thank you 

   

   

Jan Ullrich 

Lakota Language Consortium 

www.lakhota. org 

   

  

	 
	
	








	


	
	


      
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