Monday, November 1, 2010

A minor update to CasualConc Beta

I added a few features (some new and some enhanced) to CasualConc Beta.  I also enabled an experimental gapped n-gram list feature.

Documentation is not updated, so you might need to figure out how to use some of the features.

General
- Spelling variation feature.  You can register spelling variations (i.e. analyze-analyse) and use them in Concord/Cluster/Collocation searches as well as in Word List.
- You can assign different corpus/database file to the left and right tables in Cluster/Word Count in Advanced Corpus Handling Mode.


Concord

- Sorting now has 4th elements. 

Cluster
- longer cluster search (up to 8 words)

Word List- Gapped n-gram (3-5 gram)

Concordance Plot

- You can export selected concordance plot as JPEG files (individually) or print them (= export as PDF).


The spelling variation feature is to accommodate word search/word list creation in languages that have spelling variations (i.e. American/British English).  Once you create a spelling variation list, you can use information on it when searching a word/creating a word list.  There is one problem with this feature.  Unless your corpus and spelling variation list are not pos-tagged, CasualConc cannot distinguish the same spelling of different word classes (i.e. analyses [v] vs analyses [n]).  A sample list of spelling variations is included in the disk image.  You can import it to CasualConc to see how this feature works.  You might want to create your own list (there might be some errors in my list and it is far from complete).

For corpus handling, I added a feature to assign different corpus/database file to the left/right tables in Cluster and Word Count.  This is available in Advanced Corpus Handling Mode.  If you have more than one corpus or database file registered on the table and check more than one corpora or database files, you can select one corpus/database file or All for each of the two tables in Cluster and Word Count.  You need to do this in File view.

In Concord, you can select 4th sorting position.  I don't know how useful this feature is, but I wanted this from time to time, so I added it.  Also related to Concord is Concordance Plot export.  Now you can export Concordance Plots.  There are two types.  One is to export selected plots individually as JPEG files.  You can select the ones you want to export on the plots.  Another is to print the selected plots.  Thanks to OS X's "Save as PDF" feature, you can save the plots as a single PDF file.  Now that you can export plots, you might want to change the size of plots, I guess.  So I added a feature to change the hight and width of plot boxes.  You can set them in Preferences -> Others.

In Cluster, you can create a Cluster list of up to 8 words (= 7 + search word).

In Word List, you can search gapped n-grams (2-5 grams).  This feature was already introduced as an experimental feature.  I enhanced it a bit and enabled it.  I'm thinking about enhancing this feature, but I decided to release it before that hoping to get some feedback (to decide how to enhance this feature).

There might be bugs related to these new features.  Any feedback and/or bug report is welcome.

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