No subject

[Claire Bowern]

Hi everyone,
the developers of the software gave me an evaluation copy to try out. 
I've written up a review and it is currently with them (they're checking 
for any factual errors, for example for things I claim can't be done but 
can in fact be done with the software, but I didn't find it in the time 
I spent playing with it). I'm going to submit the review to the new 
documentation Journal, but let me give a brief comment here.

I thought it would be an excellent way to compile a dictionary from 
scratch, particularly in cases where there was multiple authorship 
(multiple people adding and changing records at the same time). It was 
quite intuitive to use, and could do everything that the Toolbox 
dictionary can do. In some ways it was better than Toolbox, particularly 
because of the way that it enforces structure in the database. It wasn't 
very easy to import a Toolbox database, but it was possible. Part of the 
reason was a difficult was because of the lack of Toolbox enforcing a 
consistent structure. There were multiple export options, and the whole 
thing is quite customisable.

The biggest drawback for me is that there's no easy way to interface 
with with an interlinear parser. it would be possible, once a relatively 
static skeleton database was set up, to have a regular export of head 
word, morpheme, and gloss to use with a parser (Alchemist, for example, 
or even Toolbox). If someone does all their parsing in Elan 
transcriptions it probably wouldn't be a problem. However, for language 
documentation where the linguist is building up a database from texts in 
Toolbox and the whole thing is very fluid, I don't think there'd be any 
advantage to switching.

So, the short answer is that for doing lexicography (and extended 
lexicography, such as dictionary/encyclopaedia type books or web sites), 
I was quite impressed. I think of the best thing available short of 
highly customised FileMaker databases (which have their own problems). 
given that this is what the program is designed to do, it does it very 
well. But as part an integrated documentation project, at this stage 
Toolbox is probably still more practical.

Claire

M Garde wrote:
> Dear list members,
> I have no idea if the following is of any use to us who work on smaller 
> threatened languages. If anyone does know, it could be useful to hear of 
> what use if any, this software might have for some of us.
> 
> Murray
> 
> Dr Murray Garde
> ARC Linkage Postdoctoral Fellow
> School of Languages and Linguistics
> University of Melbourne
>