Transcriber problem

[William J Poser]

As a student of Japanese, I feel compelled to point out that the lady
with the problems running Transcriber under Vista is named "Ryoko",
not "Riyoko", as at least two people have rendered it, most likely
under the nefarious influence of English phonology.

With regard to Transcriber, there may be another solution. Transcriber
is written in Tcl/Tk. To run it, one needs a Tcl interpreter, the Tk
library, and three other libraries: snack, tcLex, and a library specific
to Transcriber. These libraries are binary (that is, platform-specific)
extensions to Tcl/Tk. In Microsoftese, they are DLLs.

Transcriber is distributed for MS Windows in a single file installer
which includes not only Transcriber itself but the Tcl interpreter,
Tk, and the other three libraries.

It is very likely that the problems result from the use of an
out-of-date Tcl interpreter or library rather than from anything in
the Transcriber program itself. A possible solution, therefore,
is to obtain the most recent version of Tcl/Tk, snack, and tcLex,
and run Transcriber with these and transcriber's own library.

If not for the installer it would be a simple matter to take the existing
file, unpack it, substitute a new tclkit and the latest versions of
snack and tcLex for MS Windows, and repack it. The installer prevents
doing this directly. However, it should still be possible to create
a Starpack (a single file executable without an installer) - its just
that it may take a bit of figuring out.

Of course, in my view the superior approach would be to upgrade your
computer to GNU/Linux and not worry about buggy operating systems
sold by a company convicted of monopolistic practices on three out of
six inhabited continents...

Bill