Mac Issue: Continuation of main lines

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Elnaz Kia

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Aug 9, 2021, 2:46:45 PM8/9/21
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Hi all,

My research assistant (also cced here) has the following issue with CLANc. He owns a MacBook (macOS Mojave Version 10.14.6) and works with the latest version of CLANc. 
His .cha files have long sentences (as in the 1st screenshot), meaning that CLAN does not automatically separate the long utterances into multiple lines (as in the 2nd screenshot). 

image.png

image.png
My questions are: 
1. Is this a common issue with Mac? if yes, how can we fix it?
2. In terms of functionality, would this issue make any problems with running CLAN operations and analyses? If yes, is there an easy way to fix the old files with long main lines?

I would appreciate any comments or suggestions!

Many thanks,
Elnaz

Brian Macwhinney

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Aug 9, 2021, 5:09:31 PM8/9/21
to ChiBolts, Elnaz Kia, jing...@utah.edu
Dear Elnaz,
I think you are noting that CLANc is not forcing line wrapping. This is not a problem for any of the analyses. However, if you prefer to read transcripts with lines that fit in the standard 80-column width, you can run this command
chstring +q *.cha +1
Whenever using +1, make sure you keep a copy of the files you are changing in case anything goes wrong.

I would also like to strongly recommend that you transcript Mandarin using Hanzi and not Pinyin. Our automatic tagger uses Hanzi character input and cannot operate on Pinyin.

— Brian MacWhinney
Teresa Heinz Professor of Cognitive Psychology,
Language Technologies and Modern Languages, CMU



> On Aug 9, 2021, at 2:52 PM, Elnaz Kia <ek...@nau.edu> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> My research assistant (also cced here) has the following issue with CLANc. He owns a MacBook (macOS Mojave Version 10.14.6) and works with the latest version of CLANc.
> His .cha files have long sentences (as in the 1st screenshot), meaning that CLAN does not automatically separate the long utterances into multiple lines (as in the 2nd screenshot).
>
> <image.png>
>
> <image.png>
> My questions are:
> 1. Is this a common issue with Mac? if yes, how can we fix it?
> 2. In terms of functionality, would this issue make any problems with running CLAN operations and analyses? If yes, is there an easy way to fix the old files with long main lines?
>
> I would appreciate any comments or suggestions!
>
> Many thanks,
> Elnaz
>
> Elnaz Kia, Ph.D. (she, her, hers)
> Post-Doctoral Research Associate
> Second Language Teaching and Research Center (L2TReC)
> University of Utah
> LinkedIn
> Personal Website
>
>
> --
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Leonid Spektor

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Aug 9, 2021, 5:11:15 PM8/9/21
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Elnaz,

It is a common situation.

First: this will not effect results of any commands and analyses.
Second: if you want to fix this you can run command:

chstring -q *.cha

    afterwards when you are satisfied that command work correctly run command:

ren -f *.chstr.cex *.cha

Or if you take proper precaution by backing up your files first, then run command:

chstring -q +1 *.cha



Leonid.

Elnaz Kia

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Aug 9, 2021, 5:36:58 PM8/9/21
to Brian Macwhinney, ChiBolts, jing...@utah.edu
Dear Brian,

Thank you so much for the fast response and great help. Also, thanks for letting me know about Hanzi. I wish I had known that earlier. 

On that note, is it possible to automatically translate Pinyin to Hanzi?

Thank you,
Elnaz


Brian Macwhinney

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Aug 9, 2021, 5:57:52 PM8/9/21
to Elnaz Kia, ChiBolts, jing...@utah.edu
Unfortunately, there is no way to translate Pinyin to Hanzi. I really wish there were. This is due to the high level of ambiguity in Pinyin, even with tone marks. However, one would think that, for basic vocabulary, a rough approximation would work. There are some online sites that pretend to do this, but they don’t really work. Alas.

— Brian

> On Aug 9, 2021, at 5:42 PM, Elnaz Kia <ek...@nau.edu> wrote:
>
> Dear Brian,
>
> Thank you so much for the fast response and great help. Also, thanks for letting me know about Hanzi. I wish I had known that earlier.
>
> On that note, is it possible to automatically translate Pinyin to Hanzi?
>
> Thank you,
> Elnaz
> Elnaz Kia, Ph.D. (she, her, hers)
> Post-Doctoral Research Associate
> Second Language Teaching and Research Center (L2TReC)
> University of Utah
> LinkedIn
> Personal Website
>
>
>

Elnaz Kia

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Aug 9, 2021, 6:00:24 PM8/9/21
to Brian Macwhinney, ChiBolts, jing...@utah.edu
Alas! Thanks anyway! 

Best,
Elnaz


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