ANNOUNCE: WISH Superscriptorium 2008
Pa_McClamrock
by David McClamrock <mccla...@locl.net>
Based on "Words" by William Whittaker
and "Glossator" by Mike Polis
Available for download at "Pa Penguin's Icebox"
<http://www.geocities.com/pa_mcclamrock>
WISH Superscriptorium 2008 is a simple computer-aided Latin-English
translation program, using plain-text grammar and vocabulary data
files derived from William Whittaker's "Words" program by way of Mike
Polis's "Glossator." It requires Tcl and Tk 8.5 (or greater, when
there is an even greater version). The main program window consists
basically of three scrolling text widgets side by side, with the
headings "ORIGINAL TEXT," "TRANSLATION OPTIONS," and "TRANSLATION,"
below some menus and mini-toolbar buttons.
Latin words can be inserted into the "ORIGINAL TEXT" box by typing,
pasting, or opening a file. When the user clicks on a word, here's
basically what will happen:
* The word will appear with a green background in the "TRANSLATION
OPTIONS" window, with a dot between what appears to be the root, stem,
or base of the word and the grammatically significant suffix (if any).
Also in the green background will be what part of speech the word
appears to be, together with abbreviations for things such as the
gender of nouns and adjectives (M, F, N for masculine, feminine,
neuter), declension of nouns and adjectives (e.g., D1 for first
declension), conjugation of verbs (e.g., C2 for second conjugation),
case taken by preposition (e.g., "w/Acc" means the preposition takes
the accusative case, "w/Abl" means it takes the ablative). If the word
has more than one definition or more than one possible grammatical
analysis, it will be repeated for each.
* A brief definition of the word (not necessarily specific to the
grammatical function of the word being analyzed) will appear with a
yellow background.
* The infamous "duplicitates Latinæ" (i.e., confusingly duplicitous or
multiplicitous word endings, and uses of the same ending to serve more
than one grammatical purpose in Latin) will be conquered, or at least
set forth so a user with some rudimentary knowledge of Latin can
conquer them, with human-readable abbreviations for the number and
case of each grammatical possibility.
After that, if desired, the user can use the "TRANSLATION" box for
anything from a rough scratch pad filled with bad guesses about the
meaning of sentences, to a real "super-scriptorium" displaying an
elegant, polished translation (if the user knows how to produce one).
The mini-toolbar buttons and the features of the File, Edit, Search,
and Display menus are adapted from WISH Supernotepad 2008.
If you try this program out, please let me know especially if you find
any bugs or omissions, so I can correct them in the next version of
the program.
David McClamrock
April 2008