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Lúthien Meliel
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Post by Lúthien Meliel »

Roman wrote: Yes, some of the problems with Wikipedia come from that (for example, at one point the German article on energy was flooded by esoterics who insisted that their views were just as good and overwhelmed the physicists by sheer numbers), but I don't like the concept of an 'approval team' at all, as it tends to lead to the formation of cliques who gang up against any outsiders. For this reason, we actually have rotary moderators on this forum, each half a year, and every user can volunteer.
I would like to see something along the lines of a forum, i.e. being able to register and make changes right away, but with a possibility to be banned if vandalism is committed. But maybe the others should also say what they think.
That's also a good point. But remember that Wikipedia, despite it's principle of "anyone can edit", also has some sort of a moderating system in place - otherwise you will indeed have no way to defend yourself against the hordes of conspiracy thinkers, new-age fuzzybrains, quacks, "Einstein got it wrong! It's E = MC^3" theorists and the like - who share an above-average zeal in wanting to advertise their ideas.

The point is that an ultimate democracy has no built-in concept of quality, and cannot distinguish on that grounds. The majority always rules. There is no place for true authority, based on knowledge, skill and experience.
And yet, what you say about the "possibility to be banned *if* ... " also implies some sort of moderator: someone has got to decide on that banning.

In short, I don't think that you can ultimately do without any form of editorial team / person. The problem is, IMO, to find the right balance between at one hand (what you say too) the tendency to form cliques, and at the other hand, the tendency of pure democracy to give the lowest common denominator the decisive voice: the fish-market democracy.

I am worried most about the latter problem, and maybe the first problem can be dealt with by having some form of rotary editor-ship, like you mention exists on this forum. That editor-ship could then be open to anyone who has demonstrated to have a certain level of scholarly knowledge and skill; and of course s/he must be willing to do this. I think that there are definitely a couple of people in here who could do this.
I would in an case never consider it, because I lack the proper methodological aptitude. I'm fine using Sindarin, but only as a user indeed.
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Lúthien Meliel
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Post by Lúthien Meliel »

Suilad,

getting close now to something usable. Today I got the reverse lookup working: looking up the German / English translation of a given Sindarin word.
Whether you get the German or the English translation depends now on the same choice button that you set when searching for German or English translations of Sindarin words. Anyhow, see the screen movie at http://youtu.be/qMpQfdD6zZI

I'll next wrap up some loose ends and then I can start making this prototype available for testing.

One thing that I want to do still is to format the translation properly - like putting the main terms in bold, and some abbreviations in italics. Maybe also, display the reconstructed entries in an alternate color?
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Lúthien Meliel
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Post by Lúthien Meliel »

I did some formatting on the output, but I need some feedback in order to get that right. Here's a screencast: http://youtu.be/ZyfMqepGVYc

Meanwhile, here's a first test version in case anyone would like to give it a try.

1) Download http://parendili.org.dict/dist261111.zip
2) unzip somewhere on your drive. This will create a directory named dist/, like this:

Code: Select all

dist/
dist/ithildin.jar
dist/lib
dist/lib/things.jar
dist/lib/morethings.jar
<and>
[/color]

When the application is ready I will package it properly so that you need not bother with the command line. I have yet to figure out how to create such packages for Windows and Linux computers. I'll do that when the application is good enough for distributing.

Still, the application also runs on a mac if I double click the ithildin.jar file. Therefore, that might also works on Windows and/or Linux. If someone could try that out and tell me, that'd be great.

Otherwise, you can get it to work like this:

3) open a DOS command window / a command line terminal, navigate to the the dist/ directory mentioned above
4) enter this command: java -jar "Ithildin.jar"

The application should startup. In the command line window you should see something like this:

doriath:dist luthien$ java -jar "Ithildin.jar"
[EL Info]: 2011-11-26 14:29:47.371--ServerSession(418652512)--EclipseLink, version: Eclipse Persistence Services - 2.2.0.v20110202-r8913
[EL Info]: 2011-11-26 14:29:47.704--Not able to detect platform for vendor name [SQLite]. Defaulting to [org.eclipse.persistence.platform.database.DatabasePlatform]. The database dialect used may not match with the database you are using. Please explicitly provide a platform using property eclipselink.platform.class.name.
[EL Info]: 2011-11-26 14:29:48.007--ServerSession(418652512)--file:/Users/luthien/NetBeansProjects/Ithildin/dist/Ithildin.jar_IthildinPU login successful


If you instead get a message like "Java not found" you might want to check if you have the JRE (Java Runtime Environment) installed.
You will need version 6 or 7 in order to run this application. It is practically always present but in case it's not, you can get it for free at http://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp

How to use the application:

Note that this version does not yet have an editing option - it's read-only. It also does not yet have the option to have your output in more than one modern language, like I had built into last years' version.

You can search on either German or English entries. On startup it displays all English entries, but that list is filtered by any character sequence that you type into the search text-field.
When you click an entry in the list below the search text-field, the associated Sindarin translation appears in the panel to the right.
When you switch to Sindarin search mode, the application lists Sindarin entries filtered by the text entered into the search text-field. If you click somewhere in the list, the associated German or English word appears in the panel to the right.

You can switch between English and German only when the application is in "modern-to-Sindarin" mode, using the drop-down list above, next to the word "search". The selected language also determines what language the Sindarin-to-modern translation output will be.

Any suggestions are of course welcome (both on the application as such, and the output formatting - colors, font style, size, spacing, newline use, you name it ...)
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Roman
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Post by Roman »

The point is that an ultimate democracy has no built-in concept of quality, and cannot distinguish on that grounds. The majority always rules. There is no place for true authority, based on knowledge, skill and experience.
The solution is therefore democracy within a group of experts. This is how it is done in science: If you want to publish an paper, you get reviewed by two peers who work in the same field, while the editor of the journal does not have to fully understand everything you say, and decides based on these reviews. But it should always be about what the criticism is, rather than who utters it.
The problem is, IMO, to find the right balance between at one hand (what you say too) the tendency to form cliques, and at the other hand, the tendency of pure democracy to give the lowest common denominator the decisive voice: the fish-market democracy.
I am worried most about the latter problem[...]
The thing is though that it's the former problem which has been observed to occur several times in the Elvish community..
Anyway, for now I suggest that we should have something with
- a free registration
- a free editing of the lists upon the registration
- the possibility to revert the changes if necessary
- a platform to discuss the changes (e.g. mailing list)
and let's see how it works out.
Meanwhile, here's a first test version in case anyone would like to give it a try.
1) Download http://parendili.org.dict/dist261111.zip
The file isn't there... Looking at the videos, the layout is very well done, but the words are mixed up in the queries - for example, if you click on 'against', you should just get "prep. MM nd- LotR/II:IV, PE/17:38". Also, the whole translation should be written on the right side, preferably with the selected word highlighted. And how did the (over-)regularized !andrann end up as an alternative to anrand? - it wasn't in the list anymore...
Btw, "Wortart" is 'part of speech' in English; and you can safely ignore the links to the sindarin.de grammar in the dictionary.

I also noticed that the indefinite article Tolkien often likes to put in front of the words (like 'a wound') messes with the sorting. Maybe that's a reason to use an additional column for sorting after all? The entry would then be 'a wound' (Tolkien's exact gloss), while the entry for sorting would be just 'wound'.
Or else, we could delete the article, as the part of speech 'noun' is indicated in the dictionary anyway.
Maybe also, display the reconstructed entries in an alternate color?
Yes, I think it's a good idea, but I feel that plain red sticks out too much - maybe rather orange or a softer red?
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Lúthien Meliel
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Post by Lúthien Meliel »

Ouch - typo, I'm sorry.
Try http://parendili.org/dict/dist261111.zip

I'll come back on your other points later!
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Roman
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Post by Roman »

After some testing:
- Some of the html tags and character entities should be replaced, see e.g. uidafnen, besain or golf
- There is plenty of room on the right side, so I think that one should use linebreaks for the new data columns except for the part of speech. It is also convenient to target a line of references with the mouse for pasting somewhere else. I would also like to see the alternate forms close to the entries:

gil n.
<all translations>
Ety/358, LotR/E, S/431, RGEO/73, PE/17:22,23
(s.c. mut: ñg-)

gail (geil) n.
<all translations>
Ety/358, PE/17:30,152, VT/45:15
(s.c. mut: ñg-)

basoneth (*bassoneth) n. fem.
PM/404-405
(s.c. mut: mb-)
oneth written with pencil over besain

- You've probably noticed this anyway, but if one switches from English to Sindarin and back again, the wordlist stays Sindarin.

Otherwise, as already said, I really like the layout - it looks just like my audio player. *thumbs up* I'm guessing that the second language output will be in the lower part of the right canvas?
Didier
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Post by Didier »

For ideas and directions regarding collaborative dictionaries and the need for a central repository, it could perhaps be interesting to have a look at the WeSay project (http://www.wesay.org).

It is targetting something similar and it apparently has some sort of central repository (based on Mercurial if I understand correctly), with a simple system of rights (users and one advisor) and various change management capabilities built in the application. See especially the developers' blog:

http://www.wesay.org/blogs/category/collaboration/

Didier.
P.S. The underlying dictionary format is LIFT (Lexicon Interchange FormaT), yet another XML format for dictionaries, also used supported to some extent in SIL FieldWorks (http://fieldworks.sil.org/)
This summer, I toyed with converting Hiswe's Sindarin lexicon from its XML TEI subset to LIFT, initially to work with SIL FieldWords. I experienced some loss of information (firstly there's not a one-to-one mapping betwen TEI and LIFT; secundly and mostly, all these tools seem to handle a specialized subset of LIFT with little documentation; finally, I just did a quick test without going further in my attempts). Anyhow, I was abled to play a bit with WeSay (as well as FieldWorks) and was not fully convinced at the time. I haven't looked at new versions yet. Well, as I said above, it's just for ideas and examples how other tools try to handle these issues!
Faerphin
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Post by Faerphin »

Having played around a little, i first have a few issues that I can report:
- rim seems to be in the list twice
- A number of words don't display any translations, like dagr, taithir, degyr, tachl, tachaur, agr, aglaur, talagan, magl, haithil.
- I find it irksome having to expressly type out either i, í or î in a word to see the corresponding results, instead of getting them all by just using a regular i.
- And also: It's blazing fast. Great !

As for the interface, I actually would most like to see the full dataset for every Sindarin word found. The point being, that when looking for a translation into sindarin, I want to see as much information about the meaning of the found words as there possibly can be. Because only then I have an easy time of selcting the right one for my sentence. And when i am just looking up a Sindarin word, then i will likely want to know about special case mutations, word type or what the original gloss was.

For those needs, it would be great to be able to, for example, having set the application to german, select "adjective" from a drop down menu and write "small" into the English search box. And then be presented with a table like the following:

cidinn / adj. /klein / small / PE/17:157
cinnog / adj. / klein / small / PE/17:157
mîw / adj. / klein, winzig, zart / frail, small, tiny / VT/45:35
nimp / adj. col. / blass, bleich, klein (und zart), weiß, zart (und klein) / frail (and small), pale, small (and frail), white / col. / Ety/378, PE/17:55,168 / http://www.sindarin.de/thematisch.shtml#farben

Now I can pretty much at a glance see, that mîw and nimp mean smaller things, and also that nimp wouldn't be a good choice for something brightly colored. Now if there was a note distinguishing cinnog and cidinn, it would be perfect - but that's not the the interface's fault, and rather the data's... or Tolkiens, if there is no such information.
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Lúthien Meliel
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Post by Lúthien Meliel »

Thanks! I'll take these points (and a few others that came up) to the next release. As for the discussion points: I think I best collect an summarise those here so we can decide on them.

I think I'll come with the next release this week or the following week.
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Amroth Elenion
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Post by Amroth Elenion »

There in the wordlist german-sindarin is the word Truimph, it should be Triumph.
Ailinel
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Post by Ailinel »

Zufällig bin ich (beim Lesen über Q. ambar) in PE17 auf das Sindarin-Verb amartha- 'to define, decree, destine' gestoßen (PE17/104), das noch nicht in der Wortliste enthalten ist.
Herkunft und Bedeutung werden im Text genau erklärt, das Verb wird auch auf der folgenden Seite 105 nochmals erwähnt, und ich denke, es könnte für Übersetzungen manchmal vielleicht nützlich sein.

Edit: Weiters sehe ich gerade, dass in der Wortliste dalad fehlt (PE17/150: "Alter dalath to dalad"). Vermutlich sollten wohl beide Formen aufgenommen werden?
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Lúthien Meliel
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Post by Lúthien Meliel »

I've resumed working on the application. I'll first add a possibility to import / export a data set.

There have been some interesting developments in Java - "JavaFX2" - which is about the interface of applications built in Java (like this one): the part that you see and interact with on the screen. As I see it, the interface becomes a lot more responsive and intuitive. There's also a lot more possible in making things look more attractive - anyway, it should make the application more elegant and responsive.
Faerphin
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Post by Faerphin »

I am absolutely delighted to hear that !
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Lúthien Meliel
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Post by Lúthien Meliel »

This is just a quick demo to show what JavaFX2 looks like. I want to use this because it's a real leap forward in how java applications look and feel. There are now things possible that were absolutely unthought of in java before.
So this is also a sort of first-time ever for me with this technology, and I like it a lot so far.

The only downside is that it is yet so new that I have to do everything by hand. The old interface toolkit called Swing had been around for more than 10 years so there were all sorts of handy visual layout tools, code shortcuts etcetera. But it's still quite doable.

This demo is still quite limited: it shows the basic frame of the application. I thought of using tabs that would each hold a translation - like German -> Sindarin, or vice versa. This way you do not need to switch between modes; you can leave the German -> Sindarin one open while you use the other tab. Similarly for English, of course. Talking with Eryniel today we thought that combining the Sindarin -> modern language tabs into one would work best. I could put both translations, English and German, next to one another in the results pane. Just like the 2010.

The German and Sindarin words in this demo are just entered by hand. The English list does come from the database. The results pane to the right shows a table view - I will take that out, it is a remnant of my first tests. In its place I will put the results pane.

Here's a picture of the interface:
Image

I also made a screen cast of the application - which shows much more of what it's like. You can watch it on YouTube here
http://youtu.be/mvKlrDZvKwM
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Lúthien Meliel
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Post by Lúthien Meliel »

Ailinel wrote:Zufällig bin ich (beim Lesen über Q. ambar) in PE17 auf das Sindarin-Verb amartha- 'to define, decree, destine' gestoßen (PE17/104), das noch nicht in der Wortliste enthalten ist.
Herkunft und Bedeutung werden im Text genau erklärt, das Verb wird auch auf der folgenden Seite 105 nochmals erwähnt, und ich denke, es könnte für Übersetzungen manchmal vielleicht nützlich sein.

Edit: Weiters sehe ich gerade, dass in der Wortliste dalad fehlt (PE17/150: "Alter dalath to dalad"). Vermutlich sollten wohl beide Formen aufgenommen werden?
I agree, I think that we should!
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