[HN Gopher] Field Linguist's Toolbox
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       Field Linguist's Toolbox
        
       Author : Tomte
       Score  : 33 points
       Date   : 2021-12-26 11:17 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (software.sil.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (software.sil.org)
        
       | ribit wrote:
       | Horrible horrible software, we've been struggling with it for
       | years... and yet, without viable alternatives.
        
         | R0b0t1 wrote:
         | Do you have a list of complaints? I'm interested.
        
           | ribit wrote:
           | From the top of my head:
           | 
           | 1. Gloss alignment in the file format is governed by magic
           | (is it driven by the unicode display width? Is it UTF8
           | encoding size in bytes? Is it both?)
           | 
           | 2. The file header has this magical number in it that just
           | has to be the right one, otherwise you get weird glitches in
           | the UI (like the file can't be edited). We get these
           | regularly once per week when working with version control --
           | the magic number seems to change randomly with no explanation
           | 
           | 3. Does not work well for large teams due to shared
           | dictionary. We have a decent git workflow in the meantime,
           | but it's not easy.
           | 
           | 4. Complicated project setup, especially if you want to share
           | things. Not version control friendly -- too many config
           | files, too much system-specific stuff in them.
           | 
           | 5. No native macOS version. This is a big one. We got it
           | running under Wine on the new ARM Macs but I feel like it's a
           | ticking bomb. It's fine for field people who will use a cheap
           | disposable Windows laptop anyway, but not ok at all for
           | people doing research on these corpora.
           | 
           | Overall, Toolbox was a great tool when it was first released,
           | but a lot of time has passed and Toolbox did not keep moving.
           | Unfortunately, newer tools (such as FieldWorks) made things
           | more complicated without really improving anything. Toolbox's
           | selling point is still its simplicity -- at least we can
           | parse the files with our analysis tools.
        
         | meepmorp wrote:
         | Speaking of horrible software people have been struggling with
         | for years with no viable alternative, is Praat still a thing?
        
           | ribit wrote:
           | Very much a thing :) I am not a phonologist or phonetician,
           | so I never really worked with it directly (aside a class at a
           | summer school a decade ago), but some of my colleagues use it
           | daily and they seem happy. No idea.
        
           | wanderfowl wrote:
           | Yes, but there are now python interfaces to it which make it
           | so you can script in a more conventional language.
        
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       (page generated 2021-12-26 23:01 UTC)