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Add a software task

Mon, 09/28/2009 - 09:18 — dhigby

If there is an important task that an application assists with that you find is missing from the list, please suggest it here.  We'll try to add it and tag the application at the same time. 

Add task "Work with Acoustic Phonetic Data"?

kwarfel - 12/15/2009 - 16:52
FPlot is another of Rod Casali's programs, designed specifically to do formant-plotting, which is a piece of "working with acoustic phonetic data". I wonder if we shouldn't add something along that line; I don't see anything that really comes close to it. Or do you see something that I'm overlooking?

request for new task for lingtransoft.info

kwarfel - 12/15/2009 - 16:40
Random Sound Inventory is one of Rod Casali's programs, and it generates random phonetic sequences to exercise the user's phonetic competencies. Should we add something like "Engage in Phonetic Exercises" or "Exercise Phonetic Abilities" as a task under Language Learning?

Difficult...

hatton - 09/28/2009 - 22:22

Doug,

I just finished filling this out for WeSay.  I found the tasks thing awkward... several the categories included, say, three things, and WeSay does one or two of them.  One example: audio. WeSay lets you record and play back, but the existing category includes editing.

I just wonder if it's possible to have these fine-grained categories, or if only more broad ones (e.g. Collect Audio) will work.  One also ends up thinking of all the things one's app does that aren't listed (e.g. Collect wordlists, Add clipart, print draft dictionaries), but it seems unreasonable to go adding every feature. to some ever-growing list.  I, for one, would content with a more general list than we have currently, then leave it to the description of the application to enumerate interesting abilities.  For WeSay, that list might be like:

Linguistics(Lexicography(Elicit words, Edit Entries, Print draft, Collect Audio))

And it seems that there are really two categories of things: tasks and other characteristics. The later, for WeSay, might be  something like:

General( Multiple Scripts, Complex Non-Roman Scripts, Team collaboration, Localizable, Standard XML format, Internet Archiving)

Anyhow, something to think more about, for what its worth.

 

 

pondering your good suggestions

languist - 10/01/2009 - 01:30
Those are good points. I too have been unhappy with the Tasks that really include three subtasks, since some applications do only one or two of those things. What I was distilling the list from was an enormous list of human tasks (most of which software can't directly help with at this point), and I didn't want the tree of checkboxes to look too overwhelming. However, the list I ended up with is still far from ideal. I'll take a stab at either splitting subtasks out or making tasks more general, but I think it'll be a gradual, incremental process.

edited the Tasks a bit

languist - 10/01/2009 - 03:34
Okay, I've made a few improvements. However, these tasks were oiginally written from a human perspective, and I think they're most readable that way. Thus, I've not broken down all of the complex tasks because I felt it made more sense to keep together what a human might consider a single task. If a tool helps with a complex task, but in a very limited way, hopefully this will lead the reviewer to check the box but add a caveat to the review. Note: the hierarchy of the tasks is still only visible in Edit mode, so I've temporarily put each of the parent tasks into ALL CAPS. If checked, these will be visible and should help clarify the meaning of the subtasks beneath them. (E.g. see Speech Tools) One reason for not reducing the list of tasks to a very short and very general list is that the specific checkboxes could make it easier to quickly compare the scope of two products. If all we have for Lexicography is "Lexicography(Elicit words, Edit Entries, Print draft, Collect Audio)", then it could appear that WeSay is as broad in scope as FLEx. Having a longer list lets us be more specific. On the other hand, since the Tasks list is far from perfect, it won't provide a perfect comparison anyways. So the onus is still on the reviewers to write good reviews that bring out the scope and pros and cons of each tool. Some of the tasks are future-oriented, or "fishing": I included them because they're important tasks that modern tools could probably help with, even though no such tools are currently listed on the site. E.g. "Identify syllable structure templates and verify that the data corpus does not violate them", and "Model the syntax (e.g. phrase structure rules)". Some other reviewer might know of such a tool and add it to the site. Or, seeing these gaps might motivate us to request new features/apps. Your idea of "General( Multiple Scripts, Complex Non-Roman Scripts, Team collaboration, Localizable, Standard XML format, Internet Archiving)" overlapped a bit with my rather hairy category: "Common Tasks and Foundational Technologies/Utilities" I've added some of your tasks (starred below) to the "Common Tasks..." category. Would it help if we replaced "Common Tasks..." with two categories such as these? == Software Traits == Localizable (i.e. user interface can be translated) edit Provides a simple user interface for new computer users edit Can compare/merge edits to the same data across multiple computers edit Can control which users can edit which data edit Version control and backups edit *Supports multiple scripts *Supports complex non-Roman scripts *Stores data in a standardized XML format Archive data in Unicode in a long-life file format (e.g. XML) *Archive data directly through the internet Check spelling edit Check grammar edit == Other Features == Convert data between Unicode and legacy encodings edit Convert between formats (e.g. SFM and XML) edit Manipulate data (e.g. SFM or XML) edit Enable typing phonetic (IPA) data into other programs edit Enable typing data using non-Roman scripts into other programs edit Convert legacy fonts into Unicode fonts edit Do research, look up information edit A useful template (e.g. for a research grant proposal or linguistic paper, etc.) edit Other edit

The Software Traits that you

dhigby - 10/02/2009 - 08:11
The Software Traits that you bring up here might be better grouped into a separate, non hierarchical field. This will do two things. First, if I've checked all the tasks under Literacy for a literacy tool, I feel I've done my duty and skip to the next option on the form. So it will make submitters include that extra info. Secondly, it should make the faceted search experience better for the user. So, these foundational technologies could be placed there. For the time being, just include them the way you propose. I will be out of the loop for a bit and don't know when I'll get to it.


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