SIL Software

[Koontz John E]

Having had occasion to look at the SIL software site (see
http://www.sil.org and then go to the software section), I thought a few
comments to list subscribers might be in use:

Shoebox 5 is currently available with manuals for $45.00.  It runs under
Windows.  It can be purchased online.

Typecaster (the font generation tool) is now up to four outline families
(Doulos ~= Dutch or Times Roman/Italic, Sophia ~= Swiss or Helvetica - but
not actually very Helvetica like, Manuscript - a non-proportional font,
and Charis - with extended x-heights) is available to individuals for
$100, but seems to require being ordered specially from JAARS, which I'm
going to try.

TTAdopter seems to be a free tool for converting sets of True Type fonts
into Macintosh families.  If I understand correctly, it can also be used
to help convert Windows TT fonts to Macintosh TT fonts - mainly a matter
of making Mac files of them.

SF Converter is a free tool for converting SF - Standard Format -
databases, i.e., those used in Shoebox, ITF andother SIL tools into RTF
files that can be imported into Word for printing.  I had some limited
experience with an earlier version and thought it better than the built in
facilities of Shoebox for printing.  However, I wasn't sure it was
powerful enough to do all the work of transforming a SF database such as
might be used for dictionary data accumulation into one that could be
rendered into a printed dictionary.  The record and field structure of the
two kinds of entities is often rather difficult.  In addition, one
ordinarily wants to work some kind of inversion on the target language to
glossing language database to produce a glossing language to target
language side or index.

For this sort of thing I currently recommend some sort of scripting
language - Tcl/Tk, Perl, Python, AWK, or something like that.

JEK