What file types can be imported into FLEx

[Sadaf Munshi]

Hi there,

I am new to this forum. 

I wanted to start a new dictionary project in a class. I have about 17 students and want to give each student a certain number of words to work on. How do I combine the work of various people into one large project? I have used FLEx for a documentation project and am not aware of any tool that can help me to distribute a task among different people who can work simultaneously. Can I use a different application and then import files into FLEx? What file types/formats can be imported into FLEx so we can save time and effort? 

Thanks you

Sadaf  

Sadaf Munshi, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Linguistics, College of Information
University of North Texas, Denton, TX - 76203
https://faculty.unt.edu/editprofile.php?pid=1488&onlyview=1
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The most valuable possession you can own is an open heart. The most powerful weapon you can be is an instrument of peace.
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[Ann Bush]

Hi Sadaf, 

 

It really depends on the type of data you want to import into FLEx.  For the lexicon, you can import data in SFM format and LIFT. 

If you want your students to use WeSay, the data can be exported to a LIFT file then the different LIFT files can be imported into FLEx.

If you want the students to enter data into Excel (one column for each field), you can use SheetSwiper (https://www.sil.org/resources/software_fonts/sheetswiper) to convert these files to SFM format and import the data.

I hope this at least gives you some ideas.

 

Ann

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[Jeff Shrum]

Don’t overlook using the cloud solution and working distributedly on the same data using Language Depot.

 

 

Jeff Shrum

SIL International

Language Technology Consultant

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Office: 972-708-7400. Ext: 2030

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[Sadaf Munshi]

Dear Ann,

Thank you very much. This is very helpful. I am not familiar with WeSay but Excel is something that I could use. I just need to learn to use the SheetSwiper then. 

Best
Sadaf

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[David Baines]

Hi Sadaf
I teach Flex and have a number of students each working on Flex and using send/receive regularly.  There are some things to watch out for but overall it works very well. Either each student needs as account at languagedepot.org or they can share one login. That's probably a much better solution than starting in another program and importing later. 
All the best, David. 

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[Jeff Shrum]

Ann,

 

I just tried to find sheetswiper on both the SIL and Palaso domains and the links are not working.  I tried http://software.sil.org/products/

Sheetswiper is not on the list of discontinued software.  Is our website having trouble?

 

 

Jeff Shrum

SIL International

Language Technology Consultant

7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road

Dallas, TX 75236

Office: 972-708-7400. Ext: 2030

Cell: 903-371-0297

 

 

 

From: flex...@googlegroups.com [mailto:flex...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Ann Bush

Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2017 2:25 PM
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[Kent Rasmussen]

Unless your students are very familiar with Excel and very disciplined about data types, I would strongly recommend WeSay over Excel. The barrier to entry with WeSay is very low (I use it with almost completely computer illiterate people), and it constrains data entry such that the right data gets put in the right place (for the most part, nothing can stop you if you try to mess up the data). Using WeSay also avoids the need to transform or reshape your data, as WeSay uses LIFT XML natively.
But also don't ignore the suggestion of languageforge.org. I haven't used it yet, but it was designed for the kind of situation you're describing, I think.

Sincerely,

Kent

On 01/18/2017 03:52 PM, Sadaf Munshi wrote:
> Dear Ann,
>
> Thank you very much. This is very helpful. I am not familiar with WeSay but Excel is something that I could use. I just need to learn to use the SheetSwiper then.
>
> Best
> Sadaf

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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

[Eric Pawley]

It appears that projects.palaso.org is offline. I actually went there a few days ago looking for SheetSwiper and found it offline so had to use a copy from my personal archives. SheetSwiper is very nice, but before it was created I did the same thing by inserting an SFM marker column before each column in Excel, exporting to CSV, then using a text editor’s Find/Replace to change the commas to a carriage return and a backlash. 

I was working on a project similar to Sadaf’s—We had a short Dictionary Development workshop which produced a number of handwritten wordlists. I determined that the simplest way to get this all into a new project in FLEx would be to have the 3 typists type up the wordlists in Excel and then import into Flex. The typists already knew how to use Excel and I didn’t want to teach them WeSay or Flex.

This worked OK, but I found a surprising number of duplicate words. Perhaps if the typists were typing directly into WeSay or FLEx, then they would’ve discovered and removed the duplicates themselves.

Eric

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[David Baines]

Hi Jeff,

I just downloaded it from http://projects.palaso.org/attachments/download/381/SheetSwiper_1.0.exe a few days ago.  Like you it looks as though that link is down just now.  I've saved the program in Google Drive and it can be downloaded from: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B21ZRAooIz_XYzMwUTJBdTc0QTQ

All the best,
David.

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[Jeff Shrum]

David,

 

Thanks.  I actually have it but was checking to see what documentation was available on how to use it.  I just looked on LingtranSoft.net but could not see it explained anywhere.  I seem to remember that a Language Technology Specialist had written a tutorial for it, but I can’t find it anywhere.  I don’t have time to right one right now.  It is important to follow the MDF (Multi-dictionary formatter) standard in making the column headings in the Excel spreadsheet, or the tweaking necessary to get the data imported into FLEx can get tedious.

 

Here is an example of data ready for SheetSwiper:

 

 

The “*” indicates a bound stem and the FLEx importer will assign entries with the asterisk correctly and mark them as bound stems.  My advice is that if the data is any more complicated than the above example, to consider Wesay or Language Depot.

 

I will try and make a tutorial and place it on LingtranSoft, but it will be awhile before I can get to it.

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[Kent Rasmussen]

FLEx has a built in way to find duplicates on entry (though I'm not sure about the rapid word collection method), but as far as I last saw, WeSay does not. -Kent

On 01/18/2017 04:31 PM, Eric Pawley wrote:
> Perhaps if the typists were typing directly into WeSay or FLEx, then they would’ve discovered and removed the duplicates themselves.

[Kevin Warfel]

Dr. Munshi,

It seems to me that the easiest way to have 17 people all working together on the same dictionary database is to create an internet repository on languagedepot.org, then have each person sync his or her data to that single repo from the project located on his/her computer. Everyone works in FLEx on his or her computer; each one's work is synchronized to that same, common database. This seems to me to be much easier than trying to have each student work independently, then merge their work in order to import into FLEx.

I or any of many others subscribed to this forum can help you with the details of how to set up and use a LanguageDepot repository.

Best wishes,

Kevin Warfel

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[Brenda Boerger]

Hi Sadaf,

 

I agree with Kevin. We’ve done this for students working on the same language before and I did the same thing with the team I took to the Solomon Islands in Fall 2015. It is very straight forward and there is no conflict if the students each has particular lexical entries for which they are responsible.

 

~Brenda

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Brenda H. Boerger, PhD

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SIL International Language Program Services

 

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[Sadaf Munshi]

Hi Brenda,

Glad to hear from you. Could I may be talk to you on phone so I know what I am doing? You can email it to sadaf....@unt.edu or here.

Thank you
Sadaf 

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[Sadaf Munshi]

Thanks a ton, everyone. I have created an account in Language Depot. Now trying to figure out which project I need to request from the admin. I prefer students not be able to see each other's work until I am done reviewing them, so I guess independent accounts will work best. I do want to use the best and most efficient way which is easy for students also and I will need to review and grade their work at the same time.

Thanks again
Sadaf 

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[Kent Rasmussen]

I'm not sure this will work with Languagedepot.org, at least not well. You could ask students to only synchronize once a week or whatever, but my take on synchronizing is the more people involved, the more often you should synchronize, to avoid serious problems merging.

On 01/24/2017 03:34 PM, Sadaf Munshi wrote:
> I prefer students not be able to see each other's work until I am done reviewing them