HCMC Blogs

It appears that if a search result is in the final chunk before a chapter change (e.g. 2.2.2 is that last chunk before chapter 2.3) the search doesn't deduce the location, so no link for you.

So, for example, do a search for 'Philyra' or 'Aegina'. The second result has no citation (the first one does).

Note to selves for the future: how will we deal with English homophones for sorting the Eng-Nx word list? If we remember, let's list the ones we come across here. So far we have:

fire - "flames" vs. "dismiss employee"

fast - "quick" vs. "abstain from food"

hide - "skin" vs. "conceal"

cold - adj or noun "coldness" vs. "illness"

saw - "tool" vs. past tense of see (replaced with <gloss subtype="i">see</gloss>, SMK 21May13)

close (near) vs. close (shut)

stern (back of boat)

game (recreation)

watch (observe) vs. watch (wristwatch)

back (body part)

top (toy) vs. top (of something)

fish vs. fish (catch fish)

ECH's goal for the search engine in the web database is that, if a user searches for "fat", s/he will get results including fat, fatten, fattening, fatty.

Our current settings, and our policies for adding inferred glosses, seem to be accomplishing this nicely. An entry which has "fatty" in its def is found by a search for "fat", because it also has an inferred gloss "fat".

Searching for "fat*" also returns defs including fat, fatten, fattening, fatty ... but also fatal, fathom, father.

We reviewed our gloss-tagging policies yesterday, and concluded that yes, we are placing inferred gloss tags correctly for the purposes of generating the English-Nxa'amxcin word list, both in the web display and for the future print dictionary.

I summarize our notes about the Eng-Nx section of the print dictionary here, so we can remind ourselves in the future!

-The Eng-Nx section in the print dictionary should be considered a (fairly detailed) index to the Nx-Eng side, not a full Eng-Nx dictionary. It will be comparable to what MDK did in his Chehalis dictionary.

-Ours will go one step further than the Chehalis dictionary, in that, for example, a Nxa'amcxin word with "fattening" in its def will be found under fat, fatten, and fattening (not just the lemma, fat).

-Our print version will be like our current Eng-Nx wordlist view in the web interface, expanded to the first level of detail - e.g.

fatten

kn sacqʼʷúcnctəxʷ fattening
ʔacqʼʷúcn fattening
ʔacqʼʷúcts fattened

-Inferred glossed will be hidden in both the web view and the print dictionary, although they are important for the "behind the scenes" generation of the Eng-Nx wordlist.

-Our gloss-tagging process should provide at least one English key for each Nxa'amcxin word. It currently almost accomplishes this. There is just the occasional def in which it is impossible to figure out what the gloss-tag should be - e.g,
<seg>someone who goes fishing or hunting and does not get anything; poor fisherman; poor hunter</seg>

Got the colonist machine sorted out, at least to the point that they have the most recent data on the VM and have a backup scheme working. That is, this appears to work.
Next step is to make sure that the backup is working, how long it takes, and whether the backup is like rsync or not.

Out for over two hours at the dentist, but stayed late to make up some of it.

I've been working on getting the Text Directionality Workgroup moving, and as of today we have a working group, a wiki page and a mailing list. And a huge task ahead of us. :-)