Toolbox or FLEx

[Lena Terhart]

Dear all,
we're starting a new documentation project and we are trying to decide
whether to use Toolbox (we already have experience with working in TB
from aprior project) or FLEx (no experience).
While playing around in FLEx and testing several functions, I can see
as many advantages as disadvantages. On the FLEx list, people advise
me to use FLEx, of course, so I thought, I'd ask again here: Is there
anybody who tried FLEx and changed back to good old TB, and why?
Thanks for your answers!
Lena

[angga...@gmail.com]

How big will the project be? Will there be any collaboration? It's an
incredibly slow program for even small amounts of data. I tried it
(twice, once a few years ago and also a few months ago) and switched
back to TB and Elan each time. I tried on several computers with good
processors and large amounts of memory. Life is too short to wait
10-15 seconds for *each* query/mouseclick. Try editing a text... took
two minutes to add a single short sentence. Oh yeah, it also crashed a
few times.
Unimpressive.
Claire

[Oumar Bah]

The new version (beta) of Flex is said to be faster. I haven't tried it. Generally speaking, I find Toolbox more flexible and more adaptable to my needs than Flex.

Regards.
Oumar

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De : "angga...@gmail.com" <angga...@gmail.com>
À : Shoebox/Toolbox Field Linguist's Toolbox <shoeboxtoolbox-fiel...@googlegroups.com>
Envoyé le : Mer 13 avril 2011, 16h 17min 44s
Objet : [Toolbox] Re: Toolbox or FLEx

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[Jan Ullrich]

I don't have real experience with FLEx, only opened it a few times and it
seemed too complex and time consuming to work with.

I have been pretty happy with TB as it does pretty much everything we need
done. We have a 48,000 entry database with a pretty complex entry
structure/hierarchy. We have published it in both printed and electronic
(on-line) format and the products are very satisfactory. I find TB easy to
work with, reliable, fast and very flexible. There are occasionally
frustrations with exports but the TB support people have been very helpful
in solving those.

I have been with TB for too long to switch to other programs easily but if I
were to start now, I would look closely into Tschwanelex which seems to
offer more advanced or perhaps more consistent lexicographic solutions,
perhaps more so than FLEX. In other words, I think the decision is between
TB and Tschwanelx, rather than between TB and FLEx.

Jan

On Apr 12, 9:51 am, Lena Terhart <lena.terh...@gmx.de> wrote:
> Dear all,
> we're starting a new documentation project and we are trying to decide
> whether to use Toolbox (we already have experience with working in TB
> from aprior project) or FLEx (no experience).
> While playing around in FLEx and testing several functions, I can see
> as many advantages as disadvantages. On the FLEx list, people advise
> me to use FLEx, of course, so I thought, I'd ask again here: Is there
> anybody who tried FLEx and changed back to good old TB, and why?
> Thanks for your answers!
> Lena

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[Wallace Chafe]

This has been very interesting to me. I wanted to build a new database for
the Caddo language, and began optimistically with FLEx. It turned out to be
horrendously frustrating in a variety of ways, which I can sum up by saying
that it is extraordinarily inflexible! I moved then to Toolbox, which is
clearly more flexible and does most of what I want, although in ways that
are in some respects rather awkward. My current problem with it is that, as
it stands, it doesn't allow enough flexibility with the formatting of
dictionary entries. I think, however, that we may be approaching a solution
on that score.

I had never heard of TshwanenLex (note the partially non-German spelling),
but it looks ideal for dictionaries. My problem is that I want something
that combines a dictionary with interlinear texts, and apparently TLex
doesn't do texts. Too bad. So it seems to depend on what you want to do. At
the moment Toolbox seems the best option, far from ideal, but better than
anything else now available. Any other ideas?

Wally Chafe

--On Wednesday, April 13, 2011 6:04 PM +0200 Jan Ullrich <j...@lakhota.org>
wrote:

[Nick Thieberger]

I agree that Toolbox is still the best way to build a lexical database
linked to texts. At the 2nd ICLDC conference in February we were
unsure about whether to run a Toolbox workshop at all and, after
casting around for opinions, we went ahead with both Flex and Toolbox
workshops as there is still a large user group for Toolbox (especially
among Mac users).

Readers of this list may also be interested in a system we have been
working on to put interlinear glossed text and associated media
online. It takes a Toolbox file (exported as XML) and uploads it and
the media to produce a file like this:
http://eopas.rnld.unimelb.edu.au/transcripts/55

Details of the system are given here:
http://www.linguistics.unimelb.edu.au/research/projects/eopas.html

All the best,

Nick Thieberger

On 14 April 2011 03:44, Wallace Chafe <ch...@linguistics.ucsb.edu> wrote:
> This has been very interesting to me. I wanted to build a new database for
> the Caddo language, and began optimistically with FLEx. It turned out to be
> horrendously frustrating in a variety of ways, which I can sum up by saying
> that it is extraordinarily inflexible! I moved then to Toolbox, which is
> clearly more flexible and does most of what I want, although in ways that
> are in some respects rather awkward. My current problem with it is that, as
> it stands, it doesn't allow enough flexibility with the formatting of
> dictionary entries. I think, however, that we may be approaching a solution
> on that score.
>
> I had never heard of TshwanenLex (note the partially non-German spelling),
> but it looks ideal for dictionaries. My problem is that I want something
> that combines a dictionary with interlinear texts, and apparently TLex
> doesn't do texts. Too bad. So it seems to depend on what you want to do. At
> the moment Toolbox seems the best option, far from ideal, but better than
> anything else now available. Any other ideas?
>
> Wally Chafe
>
> --On Wednesday, April 13, 2011 6:04 PM +0200 Jan Ullrich <j...@lakhota.org>
> wrote:
>

[Jon C]

When we started our dictionary project in 2006, we tried using FLEx, but it was too unstable in my opinion, and the lack of a good SFM export worried me. (The SFM importer, however, was and is great.) So, we used Toolbox instead until I felt FLEx was ready. We switched to FLEx about 3 years ago and have been much happier with it. (The bulk edit feature is wonderful, and FLEx now supports custom fields much better than it used to.)

Toolbox is indeed more flexible, technically speaking. (Want your recipe collection in Toolbox? Devotional notes? Library catalog?) It will let you do all kinds of things, some of them cool, and some of which you might regret. On the other hand, this flexibility also means that it can't really know what is what in your data, and so it has very little dictionary-specific functionality compared to FLEx. (No print preview, no "finder list" reversal index preview, nothing to preserve cross-reference links if you change the spelling of the target word, no DDP-data entry view, no easy toggle between root-based and stem-based mode, etc.) Also, if you're going to have anyone who isn't a well-trained perfectionist working on the data, I would be very hesitant to recommend Toolbox. It simply gives you no protection against entering fields in the wrong order or mislabeling pieces of data with the wrong labels.

So, if you do decide to use TB, please do your IT support people a favor and also set up Solid (from palaso.org) with very strict rules concerning which fields can go where in the field hierarchy. This will help catch common mistakes and nip bad habits in the bud, assuming that you run Solid frequently and have set it up strictly enough. Otherwise, when the time comes to publish, or to import into FLEx, you may have some unpleasant surprises due to data inconsistencies.

Another good option for the non-linguist is WeSay. It's very hard to mess up the data, and it's compatible with FLEx. But not a lot of functionality for the linguist, so I'm guessing it's not what you're looking for, although you might consider it if you end up going with FLEx and want anyone else on your team to have access to the dictionary data.

Which reminds me, it's really hard (and not a good idea) to keep two copies of a Toolbox project in sync, whereas there is a plugin for FLEx (LIFT Bridge) that enables WeSay-style sync-ing of data between multiple copies of FLEx and/or WeSay projects. It only syncs lexical data, but there is now a feature in the works (FieldWorks Bridge) that will sync the whole project, including interlinear data. These sorts of new features for collaboration etc. are an important consideration--there really isn't anything new being added to Toolbox as far as a I know.

Regarding speed, yes, FW 7 (still in beta) is much faster than all previous versions of FW, and simpler to install since it doesn't install SQL Server anymore. It's less of a black box, and easier to back up, because it now stores the projects as a text file (an XML file). So, once this version has been thoroughly tested and released, a few more of the "cons" to FLEx should be gone.

Jon

[Lena Terhart]

Thank you so much for your answers. I had the same feeling, that FLEx is
too inflexible to work with it properly.
In my opinion, the main disadvantages are:
- you can't exchange interlinear data in a non-networking environment,
which would be very important in the field where there may well be no
possibility to set up a network
- loss of information (time codes, different speakers) when working with
Elan and FLEx
The advantages are:
- parsing can be both manually and automatically, which I haven't tried
yet, but it sounds very tempting (in TB we need a huge extra glossing
dictionary with \a & \u entries, although we are using formulas)
- possibility of syntactic extra tagging
I guess, we'll just stay with TB.
Lena

[Jan Ullrich]

Here is a link to a review of FLEx:
http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/handle/10125/1730/butler.pdf;
jsessionid=DF13C73207197135C5F2D777979CDBF8

Particularly interesting is the section on export to a printable document.

Jan

[Wayne Leman]

Wally,

A solution I have found that works well for me is to use Lexique Pro as the
user interface for my Toolbox (or Shoebox) files:

http://www.lexiquepro.com

LP has less of a learning curve than TB for inputting data. And its display
mode is very nice. I can emulate some of the semantic links of Flex or
TshwanenLex with semantic fields. These fields display nicely in LP. (So I
can display all animal names, emotion terms, etc.) There are nearly 20,000
entries in our Cheyenne lexicon. LP handles them all well, including for
conversion to dual-column format in MS Word for publication:

http://amzn.to/CheyenneDictionary

http://stores.lulu.com/cdkc

Since the LP database is still in the TB format, I can use it for
interlinearizing with TB.

A lot of quality time is being put into Flex. I I think I have came to
computerized lexicography a little too late for this old dog to be FLEXible
enough to learn all its new tricks! It's a powerful program as is
TshwanenLex.

Hello to Marianne.

Wayne

-----
Wayne Leman
Lexicography list: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist/
Ninilchik Russian: http://ninilchik.noadsfree.com

[Susan Gehr]

The lack of export for a printable document, especially a publishable document, is a deal-killer for me.

I'm staying with Toolbox for the foreseeable future. Hopefully FLEx will mature or I will have found a better solution for the Karuk dictionary database before Toolbox's software and hardware requirements become too creaky to maintain.

For the purposes of being able to use Shoebox, I maintained machines that ran on Mac OS 9 until 2006.

Susan Gehr

[Hannes Hirzel]

On 4/15/11, Susan Gehr <su...@gehr.info> wrote:
> The lack of export for a printable document, especially a publishable
> document, is a deal-killer for me.

The development of a plugiin for FLEx called 'PathWay' has been going
on for quite some time. It does the printing.

http://code.google.com/p/pathway/

"Pathway installs into SIL FieldWorks and UBS Paratext to export the
data from these applications and process it to produce Open Office,
InDesign and other forms. "

I tried used last December and it was fine.

--Hannes

[Bethia Blond]

I was wondering if anyone had any more recent experience with FLEx?

From these 2011 mentions of the FLEx Beta version and Pathway, I imagine at least the slowness and the export process may be smoothed out by now?

We don't work much with interlinear texts so FLEx's lack of functionality with interlinear texts wouldn't be an issue, but I am very interested in more systematically attaching audio recordings to a lexical database (for 'publication' online) and I was very drawn in by FLEx's capacity to systematically link entries to audio recordings. I am wondering if this alone makes it worth switching to FLEx for databases where we will be attaching a lot of audio... or people's experience is that generally the negatives of FLEx (compared with Toolbox) still outweigh the positives?

Thanks!!

Bethia

[Nick Thieberger]

Hi Bethis,

I think FLEX is the tool to use now, it is in development and they are responsive to requests. With both Toolbox and FLEx, I think it is important to see them as tools for working with data rather than ends in themselves. Coloured text or audio links within the tools are not as important as is the way in which you can make the relationships indicated by the colours or the audio links work outside of the tools.  An audio link to a single word for example in FLEx, can be played in FLEx and then exported to an app or other instance. But a longer audio file can't be cited with timecodes and played (the last time I tried it, but someone may correct me) in FLEx.

All the best,

Nick

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[Tony Naden]

It is, however, almost impossible to import into FLEx a database which has been longtime developed using thye less constrictive environment of SHOEBOX/TOOLBOX!

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/shoeboxtoolbox-field-linguists-toolbox/CAEuNOb86BhrepaCFsOYc-5_Fzpj3T5g9%2BOXFAribgRPi_er%2BXA%40mail.gmail.com.

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Amen.

[Asigwan]

You shouldn't try to do that on your own anyway! It really takes an expert working with you to help you do a one-time switch over to FLEx so that you lose as little as possible. Even then, depending upon how complicated your Toolbox/Shoebox database is, you are bound to lose something.

 

From: shoeboxtoolbox-fiel...@googlegroups.com [mailto:shoeboxtoolbox-fiel...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Tony Naden
Sent: Friday, June 3, 2022 2:36 AM
To: shoeboxtoolbox-fiel...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [Toolbox] Re: Toolbox or FLEx

 

It is, however, almost impossible to import into FLEx a database which has been longtime developed using thye less constrictive environment of SHOEBOX/TOOLBOX!

 

>> http://groups.googlecom/group/shoeboxtoolbox-field-linguists-toolbox?hl=en.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/shoeboxtoolbox-field-linguists-toolbox/CANW%2Bcj5vnmSu%3Dtb1KGgiB%2BY7xJ%2BWQCauDutnGBZjt-gsxy0nig%40mail.gmail.com.

[Asigwan]

I don't know if they fixed things yet, since we are using an older version of FLEx, but before you could not have an audio file over 1 MB in size. We had many and it ended up messing our database up badly during a S/R. The technicians had to do surgery on it to fix it and we still lost many audio files. That was when wav files were being used more. I think mp3 files are the default now. Those are much smaller in size than wav files.

Crockett

 

From: shoeboxtoolbox-fiel...@googlegroups.com [mailto:shoeboxtoolbox-fiel...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Nick Thieberger
Sent: Friday, June 3, 2022 2:22 AM
To: shoeboxtoolbox-field-linguists-toolbox <shoeboxtoolbox-fiel...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [Toolbox] Re: Toolbox or FLEx

 

Hi Bethis,

>> http://groups.googlecom/group/shoeboxtoolbox-field-linguists-toolbox?hl=en.

>>
>
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[Bethia Blond]

Aaah, that was all really helpful! Thank you everyone!

Kind regards,

Bethia