New release of AntConc (4.4.1)

[Laurence Anthony]

Dear All,

I'm happy to announce the release of AntConc (Version 4.4.1). This version is available for Windows, Windows Portable, MacOS (Silicon), and Linux (tested on Linux Mint).

This release introduces various new features to support multimodal corpora, as well as address a few issues that people mentioned. Below are some of the highlights of the new release:

• Raw file corpus building can now auto‐detect and attach media files to text documents. Text files can be matched with image, audio, and video files by stem, and SRT subtitle files can be converted into text documents with timed media alignment.

• Whisper transcription support across multiple languages has been added for audio‐only corpus creation. Audio files can be transcribed through the bundled Whisper runtime and converted automatically into aligned text corpora.

• KWIC results can now show linked media for compatible corpora. Image, audio, local video, and YouTube media dialogs have been added, along with image gallery support for image‐linked corpora.

• All corpora and AI models are now stored in a unique per-user folder on all systems (Windows. macOS, and Linux) meaning that if you update AntConc, you won't lose the corpora that you originally created. It also allows for multiple users on a single computer to have their own personal repositories that do not clash with others. This should greatly improve the ability for AntConc to be installed and used in a shared environment.

You can get the new version here:

https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/antconc/

I really hope you like the new version.

Best regards,

Laurence.

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Laurence ANTHONY, Ph.D.
Professor of Applied Linguistics
Faculty of Science and Engineering
Waseda University
3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan
E-mail: antho...@gmail.com
WWW: http://www.laurenceanthony.net/
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[Vered Silber-Varod]

Dear  Laurence,

I have tried to update to Version 441 and received an error notification:

Unhandled exception in script

Failed to execute script 'main' due to unhandled exception: DLL load failed while importing QtMultimedia: The specified module could not be found.

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "main.py", line 1656, in <module>

File "helpers\helper_SetupMain.py", line 116, in setupMain

File "main.py", line 446, in showPostViewActions

File "main.py", line 394, in import_tools

File "pyimod02_importers.py", line 457, in exec_module

File "tool_kwickwic.py", line 34, in <module>

File "pyimod02_importers.py", line 457, in exec_module

File "helpers\media_audio_dialog.py", line 3, in <module>

ImportError: DLL load failed while importing QtMultimedia: The specified module could not be found.

Close

Could you clarify why I am getting this error?

Should I uninstall previous 44X version first?

Thank you

Vered

[Laurence Anthony]

Hi Vered,

Thank you for the error report. 

First, can you tell me what OS version you are using. 

Second, yes, can you try deleting the old version first. This might be necessary especially on Windows machines. 

You might also want to try the portable version first. If that doesn't work, the problem is with the build itself. 

Laurence 

###############################################################
Laurence ANTHONY, Ph.D.
Professor of Applied Linguistics
Faculty of Science and Engineering
Waseda University
3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan
E-mail: antho...@gmail.com
WWW: http://www.laurenceanthony.net/
###############################################################

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[Laurence Anthony]

Hi everyone,

I realized that I never posted a release note about AntConc 4.4.0, which the latest 4.4.1 version extends. Let me briefly summarize the changes that I added to version 4.4.0, as I think they greatly improved the usability of AntConc.

• Full regex search was added for the KWIC, Plot, and File View tools ﴾for compatible corpora﴿. This means that you can once again use AntConc for Regex tutorials. I know this was one big reason why some people still like the old 3.5.9 version. Note thought the regex searches are always much slower than the indexed searches that AntConc uses by default.

• AI‐assisted search has been extended to the remaining tools. This can help users (e.g. in a classroom setting) to get started by using natural language to create their queries.

• Non‐token search support has been implemented in the query processor. This is something that lots of people asked for. Before, if you wanted to search a question mark, for example, you would have to add it to the token definition when creating the corpus. This feature means that you can just search for the question mark like this: word_[?]. Of course, you can also use a full regex search, but this will be slower.

• A global metadata filter has been added, with updated metadata handling and query planning support. This is a really huge change. It means that you can now load in a single full-corpus like AmE06, and then select sub-corpora (like the academic sub-corpus or any other combination of sub-corpora) in the main search window.

• Stoplist/allowlist filtering has been revised, including auto‐loading and multi‐select support, and a punctuation filter has been added. Again, this was a common request. It means that punctuation and other noise will be hidden by default, when you use a tagged corpus.

• The Wordcloud tool has been upgraded to the new engine called "true_wordcloud" that is completely original, and as the name suggests, creates wordclouds that accurately map the values in the original data. (Most word clouds don't).

• A version update checker has been added. This feature allows you to upload AntConc without going to the website. Instead, you can just go to the Help menu and check for updates there. It automatically checks for updates when you start the app, too.

• The corpus manager has now been redesigned to be easier and more intuitive to use. This is a completely new design, which I think is much, much easier to understand than in the past. If you are not clear what the buttons do, you can also float your cursor over them to get hints.

• A new AI model manager has been added to allow local AI models to be used with AntConc. This is another big change. Now, you have the ability to use a set of curated local AI models, which are completely free and open. I've added a new AI model manager for these, that works in a similar way to the main corpus manager.

If you try out the new version and run into any issues, just post them here so we can discuss them together. Maybe others will face the same issues as you.

Laurence.

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Laurence ANTHONY, Ph.D.
Professor of Applied Linguistics
Faculty of Science and Engineering
Waseda University
3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan
E-mail: antho...@gmail.com
WWW: http://www.laurenceanthony.net/
###############################################################

[Laurence Anthony]

Hi Vered,
Just one quick update from me. I just installed AntConc 4.4.1 on a clean Windows machine with no issues at all. I also downloaded and launched the portable version on a clean Windows machine, again, without any issues. So, I think the build itself is fine.

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Laurence ANTHONY, Ph.D.
Professor of Applied Linguistics
Faculty of Science and Engineering
Waseda University
3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan
E-mail: antho...@gmail.com
WWW: http://www.laurenceanthony.net/
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[Vered Silber-Varod]

Thank you! I have installed 

• Windows Installer (4.4.1)

It looks good on my computer now. No error messages.

[Laurence Anthony]

Excellent! Was the uninstall of the old version the way to fix the problem?

Laurence 

###############################################################
Laurence ANTHONY, Ph.D.
Professor of Applied Linguistics
Faculty of Science and Engineering
Waseda University
3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan
E-mail: antho...@gmail.com
WWW: http://www.laurenceanthony.net/
###############################################################

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