Subject: tc-list Re: Sam. pent.

From: "Dale M. Wheeler" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Dec 1997 07:27:27 -0800

Jim West asked the TC-List:

>Does anyone know if the Samaritan pentateuch is in print and available?

The Samaritan Pentateuch is also available as a text module in Accordance
for the Mac from the GRAMCORD Institute (www.GRAMCORD.org), if you want
to work with it in computer form.

XAIREIN...

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Dale M. Wheeler, Ph.D.
Research Professor in Biblical Languages        Multnomah Bible College
8435 NE Glisan Street                               Portland, OR  97220
Voice: 503-251-6416    FAX:503-254-1268     E-Mail: [email-masked] 
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From: Timothy John Finney <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 11:43:07 +0800 (WST)

Vincent Broman asked about Collate. I have used Dr Robinson's Collate
program, so I can answer some of his questions. How well is another
matter...

Input of Texts?

The program is SGML aware, but mostly in the output stages. I heard Peter
Robinson say (facetiously) that he thought it was the most prolific SGML
generator anywhere, although I suppose that the US military beats him on
this point. I am not sure how well it translates SGML input. Robinson was
an early convert to SGML and no one is keener than him to make a collation
program that accepts SGML. It would be good to find out whether he has
managed to do it and tell the list. 

Collations? 

I am not sure whether it accepts collations. You are not the only one who
has asked this question.

How many at a time?

100 max.

In what formats?

You must specify what delimits textual divisions, what is punctuation, tag
marker characters, gloss markers, milestone markers, and so on. The native
format is that used in the Oxford Text Archive:  e.g.,

<ch 1><v 1> Yesterday, I went [ul]swimming[/ul]. <ch 2><v 2> The end. 

Things in <> are division markers (Robinson calls them blocks), Things in
[] are tags, with[/] specifying the end (ul means underline here). As
you can see, it is SGML-ish. 

The same formats as supported for output? 

Don't know.

In what alphabets.

Whatever you like, although if you want anyone else to be able to use
your transcriptions you should stick to a convention. The program
compares words (i.e. things between white space) division by division,
and relies on the specification of some standard text as a collation
base.

With markup or only bare text?

With mark-up, but it will regard the mark-up as part of the word. For
example, [ul]blah[/ul] will NOT be equal to blah, but the 'fuzzy match'
capability will recognise these as close to each other.

Does the program filter or edit collations?

The program works by taking a set of manuscript transcriptions then
collating them against a reference text in the classical manner. It allows
you to regularise spelling variations and to specify how you want a
variation unit to look. In this sense, it allows you to filter and edit
collations. 

Support a turing-complete scripting language? 

Sorry, I don't know what this means. I do not think the program supports
scripting languages, although the last time I spoke to him, Dr Robinson
was talking about changing to programming in Java rather than C.

Run in batch mode? perform regularizations by rule? 

I don't think so. It performs regularisations individually on a local or
global basis according to your specification (a very important capability
-- global regularisation can be RISKY). 

Classify variants as significant/insignificant?  organize variants with
sub-variants, sub-sub-variants?  etc. 

Don't know.

All in all, my impression of Robinson's program is good. It has output
formats for consequent use in database, cladistic analysis and
multivariate analysis software. It can produce HTML output automagically. 
That means you can produce a web-oriented collation output as easily as a
print-oriented one. It is SGML savvy, which is more than can be said for
any other collation program (is TUSTEP?  -- if there was an English
operator's manual we would know). It has a long history in computer terms,
is written by someone who cut his teeth on manuscripts, and is still being
supported. I do not recommend writing your own collation program when you
can get this one, unless you have a very good reason for doing so. (I'm
speaking from experience here).

Best regards,

Tim Finney.

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From: Vincent Broman <[email-masked]>
Date: 4 Dec 1997 17:44:32 -0000

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> no one is keener than him to make a collation

The product blurbs suggest that Collate2-Project has some capability
to input TEI, but that more general SGML was still in the blue-sky stage.
I would conjecture that only a very limited subset of TEI is expected
for this input option; full TEI would be almost as hard as full SGML.

> I am not sure whether it accepts collations.

The question is whether the basic function of the program is to
start with a reference text and a set of 1-100 transcribed texts and
output an apparatus of collations, or whether it is to start with an
apparatus of a reference text with zero or more collations, and to add
one more collation to it by processing one new transcribed text.
The interactive approach described makes the second case seem most
likely (assuming you are not required to keep your computer turned on
{and never crash} until your set of collations is complete.)

>Sorry, I don't know what this means.

A scripting language, or an extension language, is what allows the
user to do things with the program that weren't foreseen in detail
by the vendor (always my case).  An extension language is Turing-complete
if it has enough features to perform any computation that a Turing
machine can (i.e. anything that any computer can), which means that
you need functions, variable names, loops or recursion, if-tests, and some
useful data type[s].  Writing in Java may or may not support user-extensions,
depending on how you export the capabilities in the program.

> I do not recommend writing your own collation program when you
> can get this one,

Buying and installing Windoze for my home computer, just to be able to
eventually buy the non-cheap Collate2, which does some of the things
I want to do, is not all that attractive to me.  I'll still end up
programming the other functions that I want.  Besides, I'm not interested
in time-wasting GUIs, let me bang on bare metal with Unix power tools.
I'm still mulling over what my real needs are.

Vincent Broman                                       San Diego, California, USA
Email: broman at sd.znet.com (home)       or spawar.navy.mil or nosc.mil (work)
Phone: +1 619 284 3775                       Starship: 32d42m22s N 117d14m13s W
=== PGP protected mail preferred.   For public key finger me at np.nosc.mil ===