Non-roman and Transcriber

[Catriona Hyslop]

True, you can't enter Unicode in Transcriber, but it does display it.
Since I started using Transcriber when I had already typed up my texts,
I just copy the whole transcription into Transcriber and chunk it from
there. I have imported to ELAN and Toolbox and it all displays fine. It
took me a while to get the export/import process right, making sure I
don't lose the encoding, but it seems to be working ok now. But
Transcriber is very weird and unpredictable. Any time I need to edit my
transcription in Transcriber, if I try to copy and paste a special
character, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Often I just have
to try a few times. Very frustrating. So, my 10 vatu is that while it
basically works for me now while I am starting with typed transcripts,
if I was starting from scratch I would find it very frustrating, not
being able to just type easily straight into Transcriber.

Catriona

-----Original Message-----
From: Nicholas Thieberger [mailto:thien at unimelb.edu.au]
Sent: Thursday, 30 March 2006 7:26 AM
To: 'RNLD'
Subject: Re: Non-roman and Transcriber

Transcriber unfortunately seems to be able neither to display nor enter
Unicode, given that typing Unicode directly into the underlying .trs
file makes that file unreadable by Transcriber. The discsussion of
Transcriber on Sourceforge
(http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=40021&atid=426843) suggests
the developers have known for some time about the Unicode problem.

I have looked briefly at Transana and find that it is nowhere near as
simple to use as Transcriber. I think my next step will be to insert
timecodes via Transcriber since it does that so well and then import
that file into Elan for transcription.

Nick

At 11:12 AM -0600 29/3/06, Claire Bowern wrote:
>I don't use Transcriber (I use Elan) but I have exchanged emails in the

>past with at least one software developer who did not realise that the 
>ability to display unicode fonts and the ability to enter unicode 
>characters are different coding issue. That may be the problem here.
>
>I have tried Transana, but not since they introduced unicode support. 
>In fact, the unicode issue was the main reason I chose Elan over 
>Transana. I thought the interface and usability of Transana was great, 
>and it handled everything I wanted it to (audio, video, multiple 
>annotation tiers, tags, exports), but the font issue was the deciding 
>factor for me.
>
>Claire
>
>Heidi Johnson wrote:
>>This is bad news about Transcriber. It doesn't sound like something we

>>should be
>>
>>promoting through our OLAC tutorials, if it doesn't support any 
>>Unicode fonts.
>>
>>
>>Has anybody tried Transana, from the University of Wisconsin? It's 
>>also free, open
>>
>>source, etc. They discuss Unicode issues on this page:
>>
>>http://www.transana.org/developers/international.htm
>>
>>
>>In summary, it's supposed to work with UTF-8 encoding, but they note 
>>areas in
>>
>>which theory and practice fail to mesh.
>>
>>