Well I was thinking two forms of phonetic script that would be
language-neutral would be IPA and X-SAMPA, not the Trillium script. X-
SAMPA serves the same purpose as the Trillium script except that it
is a direct mapping of IPA and is a standard.
No, there is no Webster's for Irish, but there is a phonemic
transcription that Celticists have used in the past that is a
simplified IPA of sorts, but it is only used by Celticists and
doesn't really conform to IPA guidelines. Furthermore, because the
posture symbols will likely need to be somewhat narrower than
phonemes proper, it makes more sense to me to use IPA symbols, and X-
SAMPA if users prefer something that can be more easily typed on a
standard keyboard (and edited with emacs, etc.).
I don't like the idea of an extended version of a Trillium script for
Irish because the symbols used are too English-centric (for example
"uh" for schwa, "ar" for script-a, etc.)
I was thinking I would just leave the Trillium and Webster scripts
there for English, but I'd be happy to take the Webster script out if
you think it's not useful.
A convenient reference for X-SAMPA is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
X-SAMPA.
I did notice that there is a ForbesPrEditor compressed archive in
CVS, but I didn't know what it was or whether it is worth
uncompressing. Can anyone tell me how it is different/better than
the original PrEditor?
By the way, my progress with a port like this is likely to be very
slow at first since I'm still getting up to speed with Cocoa.
I believe I do have a gnu id already. I can login to the
savannah.gnu.org site as "ezoerner".
Eric
On 9 May 2006, at 18:52, David Hill wrote:
Hi Eric,
Many thanks for your continuing interest.
On May 9, 2006, at 4:09 AM, Eric Zoerner wrote:
I am considering getting my feet wet in gnuspeech development by
working on a port of PrEditor to Mac OS X, and perhaps adding
support for multiple phoneme/posture sets for different languages.
Also to make gnuspeech more language neutral, I would like to add
support for X-SAMPA in addition to keeping the IPA support. Going
forward I think the Webster and Trillium notations will only be
relevant for English.
These days it has become so easy to use IPA, I suspect, that IPA
only could even be the route to go. I find Webster's is quite
awkward, sometimes misleading, and relatively unnecessary. Is
there a Webster's dictionary of Irish ;-) The big advantage of the
Trillium script is that it can be generated using a standard
keyboard with no special software, and edited using emacs. That's
the reason it was developed and used. If you have two forms of
phonetic script for Irish, I'd rather see IPA and an extended
Trillium script than IPA and Websters
Am I right to assume that no one else is currently working on
PrEditor?
You are right, no-one is working on PrEditor (at least officially
as part of the GNUSpeech project -- who knows what might be
happening in the backwoods of Thailand or the deserts of China ;-).
PrEditor is a nice project to work on. Michael Forbes did a
rewrite of PrEditor during the latter stages of Trillium and it was
originally written by David Marwood (who was in Vancouver last time
we were in contact, but I've lost touch wit him) and Vince DeMarco
(who is now with Apple, AFAIK). Michael is on the members list for
the gnuspeech project, so you could contact him if you want. He
was in the last stages of a Physics PhD last I heard from him. I
would have guessed he's finished by now, but his email address
should still work. Vince contributes to the main Apple Cocoa
developer list ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) from time to time. I
should have made a note of his address when I saw it, but it is a
standard Apple email address (<whatever>@apple.com), or you could
post to the list and see if he notices. None of them has been
involved in GNUSpeech any time recently.
You will probably want me to add you to the members list at some
point, in which case you have to get a GNU user ID and let me know
what it is so I can add you. You'll notice that the release date
on the current (NeXT) version of PrEditor is August 18 1995 which
is, I think, the latest release date of any component of the
original system, except, perhaps, the dictionary.
All good wishes.
david
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