how to program alternative interlinear output and simple output to word

[kristine Stenzel]

Hello all,

I am a longtime user of Toolbox trying to make the jump to Flex. I managed to map my existing fields from Toolbox onto Flex and import my data, but now I am running into two problems that I cannot seem to solve by myself.

 

The first is related to the interlinear analysis function (Texts & Words). The languages I work on have lexemes with very different surface and underlying forms. In Toolbox, I had separate fields for these forms – I put the surface/orthographic in the ‘lexeme’ \lx field – and the underlying form in a separate underlying form \u field that I created.

Then, when I set up the interlinear parsing process in Toolbox, for the first (word to morpheme parse) I had it go from the (orthographic) words in the ‘text’ \t line in my texts database to the lexical database and look at the ‘lexeme’ \lx field, but I had it output the underlying form \u back to the morpheme \m line in my interlinear analysis. This worked like a charm.

 

Now, after converted my existing database to Flex, although I still have these two fields, the ‘analyze’ tab in Texts & Words is automatically set to search for and return the lexeme form, but I want it to give me back the underlying form, as I had set up in Toolbox. I have been told that anything I was able to program in Toolbox can also be programmed in Flex, but I’m having trouble finding out how. If anyone has done something like this or can point me to a possible solution, I’d be very grateful.

 

The second problem is with export formats for finished interlinear analyses from Flex. Again, my reference is Toolbox, from which I could export analyses to Rich Text Format, choosing whatever fields I wanted, and then easily open this rtf file in word. What is the equivalent procedure in Flex? I have tried all the options in Export Interlinear and find none that work in such a straightforward manner. Either I get output with internal column boundaries that I cannot deal with in word, or I have to process output from Flex through the XLing Paper program, which gives me pdf output or something from which I still need to cut and paste if I want to work with it in word. This seems to be a huge step backward from the simple export function that was available in Toolbox – but maybe I just can’t find the equivalent option. Again, if anyone can steer me the right direction, I will be very appreciative.

 

Best,

Kristine Stenzel

 

[Andy Black]

On 9/27/2017 9:33 AM, kristine Stenzel wrote:

...

The second problem is with export formats for finished interlinear analyses from Flex. Again, my reference is Toolbox, from which I could export analyses to Rich Text Format, choosing whatever fields I wanted, and then easily open this rtf file in word. What is the equivalent procedure in Flex? I have tried all the options in Export Interlinear and find none that work in such a straightforward manner. Either I get output with internal column boundaries that I cannot deal with in word, or I have to process output from Flex through the XLing Paper program, which gives me pdf output or something from which I still need to cut and paste if I want to work with it in word. This seems to be a huge step backward from the simple export function that was available in Toolbox – but maybe I just can’t find the equivalent option. Again, if anyone can steer me the right direction, I will be very appreciative.

It is possible to produce Word output from XLingPaper.  See http://software.sil.org/downloads/r/xlingpaper/resources/documentation/xxe7/UserDocXMLmind.htm#sFAQProduceWord for more information on that.  You could then copy and paste from the Word document produced by XLingPaper.

Having said that, you may want to consider just learning to use XLingPaper instead.  See http://software.sil.org/downloads/r/xlingpaper/resources/documentation/WhyUseXLingPaper.pdf for the advantages of climbing the learning curve that XLingPaper has.

One nice thing about using the PDF XLingPaper produces is that interlinear text will automatically wrap long lines in the PDF.  These long lines do not automatically wrap with the Word output.  With Word, you have to manually fix the long lines (see http://software.sil.org/downloads/r/xlingpaper/resources/documentation/xxe7/UserDocXMLmind.htm#secExInterlinearContinuation in the user documentation for how to do that).

--Andy

 

Best,

Kristine Stenzel

 

--
You are subscribed to the publicly accessible group "FLEx list".
Only members can post but anyone can view messages on the website.
To change your status, please write to flex_d...@sil.org.
You can join this group by going to http://groups.google.com/group/flex-list.
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "FLEx list" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to flex-list+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to flex...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/flex-list/019701d337ae%24665ceec0%243316cc40%24%40gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Kevin Warfel]

Hi Kristine,

 

You wrote: “The languages I work on have lexemes with very different surface and underlying forms. In Toolbox, I had separate fields for these forms – I put the surface/orthographic in the ‘lexeme’ \lx field – and the underlying form in a separate underlying form \u field that I created. ”

 

In FLEx, the underlying form should normally go in the Lexeme field and the surface form in the Citation Form field. Is that the way you imported your data from Toolbox to FLEx?

 

Blessings,

Kevin

 

Kevin Warfel

Associate Dictionary and Lexicography Services Coordinator

a.k.a. Dictionary Development Coordinator

SIL International

 

Current technology makes it possible to provide those translating into just about any language with both a dictionary and a thesaurus in the target language, the standard tools of the trade for professional translators, so why are mother-tongue translators in minority languages still expected to do their work without these tools?  Ask me about Rapid Word Collection after reading about it at rapidwords.net.

--

[Kent Rasmussen]

Hear! Hear!

On 09/27/2017 01:31 PM, Andy Black wrote:
>
> Having said that, you may want to consider just learning to use XLingPaper instead.

--
Kent Rasmussen
SIL Eastern Congo Group Linguistics Consultant / Conseiller en Linguistique de SIL au Congo de l'Est
Orthographies for eastern DRC / Orthographes pour la RDC de l'est
+1-541-357-7276

[Kevin Warfel]

Hi again, Kris.

 

Without concrete examples of what the data looks like that you’re dealing with, I find myself struggling to understand your situation. When you say that “the underlying form is an abstract form that is not what is used in the practical orthography,” do you mean that the two are unrelated, that the orthographical form cannot be derived from the abstract form via a set of definable “rules”? If so, then I’ll have to let someone else answer your question.

 

But if you don’t mean that, does this example from the language I worked on in Africa parallel what you’re dealing with? Elements to the left of the arrow (⇒) are the underlying lexeme forms, while those to the right of the arrow are in the form used in the practical orthography. Note the very different ways that the suffix is written, depending on the context. FLEx can interlinearize data like this, but it’s not clear to me if your case is similar to or very different from what I illustrate here.

bò- + -ɛ́  ⇒ bòo

bànà- + -ɛ́  ⇒ bène

bil- + -ɛ́  ⇒ bilí

fù- + -ɛ́  ⇒ fùu

fʋ- + -ɛ́  ⇒ fʋɩɛ́

gʋm- + -ɛ́  ⇒ gʋmɛ́

hun- + -ɛ́  ⇒ huní

zʋ̀- + -ɛ́  ⇒ zʋɩ̀ɛ

etc. (There are many other ways that this suffix manifests itself in the orthography, all but a handful being very regular and predictable linguistically.)

 

-Kevin

 

From: flex...@googlegroups.com [mailto:flex...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of kristine Stenzel
Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2017 5:54 PM
To: flex...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [FLEx] Digest for flex...@googlegroups.com - 5 updates in 2 topics

 

Hi Kevin, Hi Andy -

 

Thanks for your messages and suggestions. Andy, I will look into the XLingPaper program a bit more, but would really prefer not to have to be dependent on a middle-man program in order to transfer and incorporate my analyzed data into my academic work. All I want is for it to be exported in a more manipulatable format.

 

Kevin, in response to your query, I actually work with three fields in Toolbox, a citation form (for dictionary-making purposes), a lexeme form, and an underlying form (both of these for purposes of linguistic analysis). For some morphemes, these all coincide, but often they do not, so I need all three because each has a specific function (for analysis and/or for dictionary making).

 

Using the underlying form as the lexeme form in Flex makes sense from the linguistic analysis viewpoint, and I realize that if I did that, the automatic interlinear function would work the way I want it to. The problem is that the underlying form is an abstract form that is not what is used in the practical orthography. So if I have a text written or transcribed by a speaker of the language using the practical orthography and import it into Flex to do the interlinear analysis, Flex is going to go look in the lexeme field to find correspondences for those orthographic forms, but it won’t recognize the underlying forms it finds as being the equivalents of the orthographic words the speaker would have written unless I can program it to do that. As it is now, in order for Flex to ‘recognize’ the lexemes, I would have to first ‘translate’ the orthographic representation into the corresponding underlying forms in the text.

 

This is exactly the situation which I could easily deal with in Toolbox by simply setting up the interlinear parsing paths to ‘look’ at the orthographic/lexeme form but ‘return’ the underlying form to my interlinear morpheme line. What I need to know is whether it is possible to program a different parse path in Flex that what is there automatically. I’m hoping there is a way to do this, because it looks like Flex has some other nice features that Toolbox didn’t have. But if I can’t find a way to do this, then I will have to stick with Toolbox.

 

Thanks again for your help – hope there’s a solution for this case, as I imagine I’m not the only person with such issues to deal with.

 

Best,

Kris

[Alan Vogel]

Kristine, one alternative for the exporting problem that you did not mention is to export from Flex using the "OpenOffice/LibreOffice Writer" option. The resulting file is easier to work with than the one resulting from the two Word options. If you are willing to use OpenOffice or LibreOffice to write your papers, this might be a good option. The one down side at the present time is that the current version of Flex has a problem in this export process, whereby some of the sentence numbers (and sometimes a word at the beginning of a sentence) doesn't get exported. This problem is on the list of the Flex developers to fix, and in the meantime it is possible to manually add the missing numbers and words in the exported document. Alan

--

[Jeff Heath]

Kris,

For the interlinear question, you can use Tools > Configure > Interlinear to request whatever analysis lines you want in your Interlinear. In this example, I asked it to give me the underlying morphemes (which I believe would be your underlying form) and also the lexical form:


In this case the underlying form "chil" comes from an allomorph in the entry for "chaal":



I'm pretty sure what you want to do can be done... it's just a matter of pinning it down and getting it into FLEx terminology.

Hope that helps,
Jeff

[Beth-docs Bryson]

I wrote this several days ago, and then somehow didn’t hit “send”.  Others have since said some of what I said below, but I figured I would send it anyway, just in case there is anything new.

-Beth

------

Actually, “Lexeme Form” and “Citation Form” are not the only two fields that matter here.

Normally “Citation Form” is for situations where the normal headword for a dictionary would be an inflected form, rather than a root or stem.  For instance, if the dictionary needs the infinitive of a verb, or the 3rd Person Present, then that form would go there, and the root (or stem) would go in the Lexeme Form field.

It is the Allomorph fields that are for storing the different surface forms of morphemes.  Normally one would try to put the “most basic” allomorph in the Lexeme Form field, and then all the other ones would go in multiple Allomorph fields.  (Look near the bottom of the Lexicon Edit view to find this field, or use the “Insert” menu to add a blank one.)  All of them are available to the interlinear when you break a surface word into pieces, and it tries to see if it can find any of those pieces in the lexicon.  (If you are using one of the automatic parsers, then the order you list the allomorphs matters, and you would want the “elsewhere” allomorph in the Lexeme Form field.)

In the interlinear output, I’m pretty sure the interlinear row for “Lex. Entry” only shows the Lexeme Form, not the Citation Form.  Certainly this has been requested in the past (I could look up the Jira number if someone wants it).

Kristine, one way to configure the interlinear output is by going to the “Print Output” tab of the Interlinear view (I don’t think that’s the right name, but it is the last one, after “Info”, “Gloss”, “Analyze”, etc.).  Then use the menu item Tools/Configure/Interlinear to adjust which rows are showing, and what Writing System each row shows.  If you are on that tab when you export, then the settings you made for that tab will apply to your export.

However, this may not do what you want.  Yes, you can choose whether to show the Morphemes row (surface forms) or the Lex. Entry row (underlying form), this doesn’t allow you to choose whether the Lex. Entry row is showing the “Lexeme Form” field or the “Citation Form” field.

In terms of the export options, there are two options for Word (Word 2007 and an older version), and they do slightly different things, and people have had greater or less success using them.  I believe the Word 2007 option uses a kind of “formula” format instead of ordinary tables, and the reason for that is so the lines *would* automatically wrap.

The OpenOffice export is also a good one, and many people have had more success with that than with either of the Word options.  It puts the output into a table instead of a “mathematical formula".  Some people find it much easier to work with a table (you can select rows or columns and apply formatting to only that row or column, for instance), but this one definitely *does not* automatically wrap the lines—you have to manually divide the table at the page margin.

It is certainly true that there is plenty of room for improvement in the interlinear export options, but I wanted to be sure you were at least aware of some of what *is* currently available, in case any of it applies to you.

-Beth

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/flex-list/4ee4c8b0ac63189abbd35a87b330b33a%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jim Kornelsen]

Also for LibreOffice/OpenOffice, the Linguistic Tools add-on makes it especially convenient to grab and configure interlinear data from Flex.  However, if your document is already in Word, then it may not be worth the effort to switch to LibreOffice.  Word is generally the best word processing software, although the tools we have available for LibreOffice may be better.

-Jim K