Pangloss: An Interlinear Glossing Tool within an Existing Application Platform

在计算机时代，语言学的一个重要目标是为广大的研究人员和语言社区成员提供语言数据。行间有光文本（IGT）是一种数据类型，是文献和描述性语言工作的核心。在NSF的资助下，Jeffrey C. Good （Long Now Foundation）将启动Pangloss项目，以探索扩展OpenOffice.org（一个办公生产力软件的开源套件）与IGT协同工作的功能的可能性。这个扩展将允许文本的语法信息的注释和这些文本链接到一个简单的词汇数据库。这允许在熟悉的文字处理器环境中构建字典和注释文本集合。由于OpenOffice.org的原生文档格式是各种XML，因此使用该系统生成的资源将准备好进行共享和归档。这个项目的产品将不限于工具本身，还将包括关于行间注释文本和词典标准的建议，以及关于在现有办公应用程序套件之上构建特定领域工具的实用程序的建议。这个项目有潜力显著提高那些从事语言文档工作的人的生产力。语言学家通常依靠商业软件产品来构建语法、字典和文本，因为它们相对容易使用。然而，这些产品在语言数据的编码和存档方面有缺点。提出的研究解决了对易于使用的软件的需求，该软件没有封闭格式专有应用程序固有的缺点。这个项目也将作为一个试验性的研究，检查用于语言目的的工具开发的“插件”模型的可行性，这是一种显著降低创建新工具成本的软件设计方法。因此，它不仅有可能影响语言学，也有可能影响其他学术领域，这些领域可以利用这个项目所做的工作作为开发自己工具的模型。

Making language data available to a wide range of researchers and language community members is an important goal for linguistics in the computer age. Interlinear glossed text (IGT) is a data type which is central to documentary and descriptive linguistic work. With NSF funding, Jeffrey C. Good (Long Now Foundation) will launch the Pangloss project to explore the possibility of extending the functionality OpenOffice.org (an open source suite of office productivity software) for work with IGT. This extension will allow the annotation of texts for grammatical information and the linking of those texts to a simple lexical database. This the allows the building of a dictionary and a collection of annotated texts in a familiar, word processor environment. Because OpenOffice.org?s native document format is a variety of XML, resources produced using this system will be ready for sharing and archiving. The products of this project will not be limited to the tools themselves, but will also include recommendations for standards for interlinear glossed texts and lexicons, as well as recommendations regarding the utility of building domain-specific tools on top of an existing office application suite. This project has the potential to significantly enhance the productivity of those working on linguistic documentation. Linguists commonly rely on commercial software products to build grammars, dictionaries, and texts, due to their relative ease of use. However, these products have disadvantages with respect to the encoding and archiving of linguistic data. The proposed research addresses the need for easy-to-use software which does not have the disadvantages inherent to closed-format, proprietary applications. This project will also serve as a pilot study examining the feasibility of the "plug-in" model of tool development for linguistic purposes, a method for software design that significantly lowers the costs for the creation of new tools. As such, it has the potential to impact not only linguistics generally but also other academic fields that could use the work done in this project as a model for the development of their own tools.