ConlangDictionary 0.3 - now phonology parsing is faster

[faiuwle]

About this... I read the thing where it says "Manually adding <squareBrackets> to the .cdic file (inside the top-level <conlang> tag)
will cause the dictionary to use square brackets instead of slashes", but I don't understand how. If I add the line <squareBrackets> just below the <DOCTYPE> line, the program can't open the file. Where exactly am I supposed to put it?

The top of the file should look like this:

Code: Select all

<!DOCTYPE ConlangML>
<conlang name="MyConlang">
  <squareBrackets />

I'm not 100% sure you need the " /", but it won't hurt. You can also stick it immediately after </inventory> or </phonotactics> or etc.

Oh yeah, one more problem. I need to copy the list of words and paste it to Excel. But if I mark several words in the dictionary and press CTRL+C, it only copies the last word. When I try the export word list thing, it only makes an empty file (putting .txt at the end of the file name doesn't make any difference). I really need the word list right now, what should I do? I can't just copy one word at a time because there are several hundreds of them.

Exporting to text should work - just give it a formula like "/w","/p","/t","/d" or with whatever fields you want, and you should just be able to load it into Excel.

[phaed]

I'm not 100% sure you need the " /", but it won't hurt.

Yes, it's required. Without it an exception for an unclosed tag will be raised.

[JasonK]

Firstly, amazing job!

I've been using this program for a little while with no problems but i just downloaded the newest version and there's one minor issue i noticed straight away:

I'm using Vista and I never had problems with IPA symbols on the old v0.2, but now that I'm using the new one, the program isn't rendering as smoothly and i can't get symbols to display properly. With the old version everything except the labiodental tap works fine but with the new one it's back to black boxes

It's nothing to do with my computer since i can have both running at the same time with one displaying symbols and the other not. I don't know if you already know about this but I thought I'd point it out anyway.

Again, awesome program

[Qwynegold]

Thanks, it all works now except for one problem. I have the letters ū and ō in this language, and when I export into a text file they get replaced by u and o (the other non-ASCII letters ö and ü still work though). I tried resaving the text file and choosing Unicode instead of ANSI, and then export again choosing the same file name and checking the box "Overwrite file", but then it again saves in ANSI format. What should I do to get it to preserve all letters?

[faiuwle]

I'm using Vista and I never had problems with IPA symbols on the old v0.2, but now that I'm using the new one, the program isn't rendering as smoothly and i can't get symbols to display properly. With the old version everything except the labiodental tap works fine but with the new one it's back to black boxes

Does changing the font (to a unicode font) on the last tab fix it? It's now set to use DejaVu Sans by default, and if you don't have it it will probably default to something ugly and non-unicode, so installing DVS might work too.

Thanks, it all works now except for one problem. I have the letters ū and ō in this language, and when I export into a text file they get replaced by u and o (the other non-ASCII letters ö and ü still work though). I tried resaving the text file and choosing Unicode instead of ANSI, and then export again choosing the same file name and checking the box "Overwrite file", but then it again saves in ANSI format. What should I do to get it to preserve all letters?

Are you sure it's not an issue with your text editor or the font it's using? I just tried it, and it seems to work in gvim.

[Qwynegold]

I have DejaVu Sans. Now I tried opening the file with Notepad and OpenOffice Writer too, but it was the same problem.

[faiuwle]

Well, neither of those uses DVS by default, IIRC, so that shouldn't matter. Can you paste those characters into the editor and have it save them and load/display them correctly?

[Qwynegold]

You mean I should paste ūō into the text file, then save it, then export again? That doesn't work either.

Ugh, I thought I came up with a solution. Change the spelling into other characters that are supported. But that didn't work either of course, because the spelling of the old words doesn't change.

[faiuwle]

I meant you should paste those characters into your editor to see if it can actually display them. Or you could upload the file here, so I can see if it's actually saving it wrong, or if it's just your editor.

To change the spelling of words actually in CD, you actually have to click the "change" button.

[Qwynegold]

I meant you should paste those characters into your editor to see if it can actually display them. Or you could upload the file here, so I can see if it's actually saving it wrong, or if it's just your editor.

Yes, it does display those characters, but you have the save the file the right way or they'll disappear.

I meant you should paste those characters into your editor to see if it can actually display them. Or you could upload the file here, so I can see if it's actually saving it wrong, or if it's just your editor.

To change the spelling of words actually in CD, you actually have to click the "change" button.[/quote]
Yeah, meaning I would have to click the button eleven million times, so my idea didn't work at all. Anyway, I'll send you the file if you would be kind enough to extract the word list for me*, and also so you can see the problem with the blank lines.

*I just need a list like this so I can paste it into Excel or any program:
adado
adadu
adakp'ō
adap
adat'k'ya
ado-anglofutsocha
allofu-twükku
allonnō
allotta
etc.

[faiuwle]

[faiuwle]

Well, I sent you the list anyway, and all the macrons show up perfectly here. The savefile is full of lines of $#xd; in some of the definitions, which appears be an XML way of representing some kind of newline character. but I have never seen it, and it seems to be doing newlines just fine without any entities anyway. I deleted all of the #&xd;s with search and replace, and they didn't come back. Deleting excess newlines from within CD also results in them not coming back when saved and reloaded. It looks like you just have some kind of bizarre encoding issues on your machine, or something.

[JasonK]

Does changing the font (to a unicode font) on the last tab fix it? It's now set to use DejaVu Sans by default, and if you don't have it it will probably default to something ugly and non-unicode, so installing DVS might work too.

Thanks a lot, I knew it had to be something simple!

Just out of interest, what font was the old version defaulted to?

[faiuwle]

It wasn't set, so presumably it was whatever the default application font setting in your OS is.

[Torco]

a few bugs I've noticed:

when you rename a phoneme's with parsing order activated, it's alphabetic order name doesn't change, and vice versa.

in the words dialogue, it orders words from shorter to longer; this is most likely a bug with the alphabetic ordering thing: it seems to do good with the alpabetization, but it does it like this

a
an
az
ba
be
bo
abe
abz
bna
zne
abea
atra
bnei
abras
xbgrr

so it's like it broke words into grous of same-lenght ones and then ordered alphabetically. the earlier versions didn't do this. It's pretty useful for finding homophones after applying SCs, tho

Also, it could use "are you sure" dialogues for loading and stuff... I just lost an hour's work on a misclick

I'm working on the documentation, but I'm finishing my final paper for my undergrad degree, so it's kinda been put on queque.

[faiuwle]

when you rename a phoneme's with parsing order activated, it's alphabetic order name doesn't change, and vice versa.

Did you click the "change" button next to the name after you edited it? (Maybe I need to have some blinking "CLICK THE BUTTON" message come up whenever you edit that field...)

in the words dialogue, it orders words from shorter to longer;

Which dialog is this, or do you mean on the main words tab? I don't see this happening on the main tab or on the import wordlist dialog, though. I rearranged my alphabet to be English-like, and get:

can
céni
ciké
cu
cun
dan
de
dégen

etc. However, the list is alphabetized by phonemes, not by orthography, so it might not be exactly like you expect it to be, if the word starts with a silent letter or somesuch. (On the import wordlist dialog it's alphabetized by orthography, as if it were English, or maybe whatever language your OS was installed in. In the above example, the main difference seems to be that the longer words come first, so dégen comes before de, etc.) OTOH, maybe I should make it an option to sort primarily by length...

Also, it could use "are you sure" dialogues for loading and stuff... I just lost an hour's work on a misclick

Ouch, sorry about that. You mean something like an alert if you try to load over a dictionary that wasn't saved? There is one for trying to save over a different file.

I'm working on the documentation, but I'm finishing my final paper for my undergrad degree, so it's kinda been put on queque.

(in the queue?)

Yeah, that's cool, I understand. It doesn't mean you're not allowed to complain about bugs, or anything like that.

[Diogenes]

I managed to install it on my Windows machine. Is there a good help, documentationor tutorial oiut there?

(And I hope that it will get installed an Linux justa as easily )

[faiuwle]

Is there a good help, documentationor tutorial oiut there?

Torco is writing it. For now, there is a draft back on page 8 of this thread. If you have questions, feel free to ask, although some of them may have been answered in the thread already.

[Torco]

yeah, on queue... dam iu inglicsh orthagraphee !

[faiuwle]

I'm bumping this thread to prevent it from possibly getting pruned, and also to bring an update. I wasn't able to work on this much lately, as I got a new hard disk and have spent a while getting all of my OSes and programs reinstalled on it. I'm back on it now, but all I can say is that huge update is huge. To give you an idea, here's my list of things to implement:

Code: Select all

Version 0.3
+ Phonemes now have features; words have features instead of type/subtype.
  - Create feature-management dialog, and hook it up to phonology and word tabs
  + Make it possible to set features for individual phonemes and words
  + Make features loadable and saveable
  + Make it possible to assign features en masse via multiselection
- Discovered and killed insideous pointer-related logic error that may have 
  caused various phoneme problems in newly-created dictionaries that had not
  yet been loaded from a savefile.
+ Phonotactics can now be specified using phoneme features.
  + Add feature bundle creation to feature-management dialog, and make them
    assignable en masse as with single features
  + Redesign Phonotactics page and its input dialogs
  + Modify orthography-parsing algorithms as needed
  + Redesign phonology-editing dialogs to reflect this
+ Phoneme tab and word tab now filterable by features.
  + Possibly allow user to create columns on word tab to display values of 
    particular feature groups
+ There is now a button for translating XSAMPA into IPA on the phonemes tab.
  (Lookup table compiled by Zoris and borrowed from his ConlangIDE code.)
+ Bloated last tab has been reorganized into more traditional menu system.
+ Command-line options now available!
    Usage: ConlangDictionary [options] [filename]
           ConlangDictionary [options] -default filename
           ConlangDictionary -version
           ConlangDictionary -help

    CD will auto-open <filename>.cdic
    With -default option, <filename>.cdic will also be marked as default file to 
      open when no file is specified
    -version displays the current version number and quits
    -help displays this screen

    Options:
      -font <fontname>: Sets default application font to <fontname>
      -dir <relativepath>: Sets default directory to <relativepath>

(Stuff marked with -s is done; stuff marked with +s is yet to be completed.)

Also, here is a screenshot of the feature, er, feature, since I've got the graphical bits implemented for the phonemes, at least:

It's been a while since Phonology 101, so I've probably got some of that wrong, but hopefully you get the idea. Also, none of these features are hardcoded - you create them and assign them yourself, so Phonology 101 is definitely not a requirement for using features.

[Torco]

Niiiice

I had forgotten about the documentation I was supposed to write regarding this piece of software, sorry about that; as soon as you upload the last version I'm updating and uploading my 'how to use faiuwle's CD thingie' .doc file.

[faiuwle]

Well, it's not going to be for a while, and there's going to be a lot of new stuff in it to document. It'd probably be better to upload the documentation as of 0.2 when you've got it finished, and don't worry about 0.3 until I actually get it finished. There's going to be a lot more features coming after this too, so if you're in it for the long haul you're going to have to update it periodically anyway. Just put the version it's for in the documentation somewhere, and it should be fine.

[Nortaneous]

Am I doing something horribly wrong, or does it assume an encoding besides UTF-8 for importing from text files? I imported a CSV file of my lexicon, and...


(Running Win7. Textfile saved from notepad++, and it's encoded in UTF-8 there. Also, the characters that error there (a-acute, e-acute, h-cedilla) work fine when I enter them manually.)

[faiuwle]

It should be UTF-8, and I know I tested that, but you're right, I just tried that in Windows and it does mess it up. Let me go try it in linux and do some experiments.

ETA: Yeah, it works in linux, and it should be able to load a UTF-8 .cdic file even in Windows. I'll try to figure out how to get the CSV input to be less stupid in Windows; meanwhile, if you load your CSV file using the linux executable and then save it (or send it to me and I'll do it), it should make a .cdic file that can be read properly by the Windows version.

[Zapcon]

This doesn't work on my MacBook Pro running OS X v. 10.6.6. Am i doing something wrong, or does it not work on this system for everyone?