LINGUIST List 3.612

Sat 08 Aug 1992

FYI: Language Industry Monitor; WordPerfect

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Colin Brace, Language Industry Monitor (follow up)
2. , WordPerfect character sets

Amsterdam, The Netherlands
July 1992

 LANGUAGE INDUSTRY MONITOR
 =========================

 [Follow-up]

In February of this year, I posted a notice on this net
about LANGUAGE INDUSTRY MONITOR, a bimonthly newsletter
dedicated to the world of natural language computing. The
reponse was overwhelming, with many new subscriptions and
orders for sets of back issues. Inquiries from this posting
are still trickling in. If any of you did respond but have not
yet heard from me or have not received a sample issue, my
sincere apologies. Please contact me again, restating your
request.

For those who did not see the original announcement, very
briefly, LANGUAGE INDUSTRY MONITOR offers a lively roundup
of news, background information, and commentary the world of
natural language computing. This includes such technologies
as speech processing, handwriting recognition, terminology
management, full text indexing and retrieval, document
processing, and computer-aided translation (including MT).
LANGUAGE INDUSTRY MONITOR is currently the only publication
of its kind. It is unique because it addresses these related
technologies as a whole, placing them in relation to each
other, and viewing them in the context of broader
technological, social, and political issues.

To clarify a couple of points which weren't clear from the
original notice and caused some confusion:

* LANGUAGE INDUSTRY MONITOR is not (yet) distributed in
 digital form; it's printed on paper.

* LANGUAGE INDUSTRY MONITOR does cost money (US$ 95
 airmail). Published independently and advertisement-free,
 it's "subscriber-driven."

If you would like to receive a sample copy of the next issue
of LANGUAGE INDUSTRY MONITOR, send me your name, department,
company, or institute, and full mailing address.

 > > > > > > IMPORTANT < < < < < <

If you are involved in a natural language processing project
and have a product announcement or interesting research
results to share, or, for example, you have evaluated or
extensively used any of the NLP-based products currently
available, I would very much like to hear from you. Send
announcements, reports, publications, voluntary
submissions, or other relevant materials to my attention at
the following address. Or contact me directly to make an
appointment for an interview.

Colin Brace
Editor

 ===============================================
 L A N G U A G E I N D U S T R Y M O N I T O R
 "The World of Natural Language Computing"
 ISSN 0925-3327
 Eerste Helmersstraat 183
 1054 DT Amsterdam, The Netherlands
 Tel: + 31 20 685-0462 Fax: +31 20 685-4300
 Internet: colinbparamount.nikhefk.nikhef.nl
 CompuServe: 70023,1164
 ===============================================

 Especially Indianist WordPerfect users take note: on recent versions
of WordPerfect that include .DRS files dated 5-31-91, characters 20-23 of
Character Set 2 (Multinational 2) are totally screwed up. Versions that
include .DRS files dated 3-19-91 (for WP.DRS) and 4-12-90 (for WPSMALL.DRS)
are OK. Since 21 is the nasal hook, I doubt that I'm the only one who has
noticed this.
 I discussed this in detail with the WordPerfect people but un-
fortunately they have decided that characters 20-23 were "changed"
intentionally. What really happened, apparently, is that some glitch got
into their documentation at some point and subsequently they changed the
.DRS files to match the documentation.
 The result is that new versions of WordPerfect, including un-
fortunately the March 92 version just out, have, in place of former
characters 20-23, total garbage. I have explained to them that the new
20-23 are not anything recognizable to a linguist and asked them to consult
other linguists in order to confirm this.
 If anyone else has run into this problem, the person I have been
most recently in contact with is Susan Wagstaff at WPCorp (1-801-222-1588
x21385, ref. no. 96863).