DiscWorld
Aaron Timbrell dives into the software directory.
This issue we have some very interesting items. Top on my list are the excellent !Scribble PDF (Portable Document File) generator and the !Rdesktop client from eQ Research and Development. This months commercial offering is the Ergane translation program. Now some of you may well be aware that you can download this for free from the Internet. However the version we have here is the CD based one with all the dictionaries as supplied by APDL. Let the author David O'Shea tell us more.
Ergane
This was originally a Windows program. Thanks to Gerard van Wilgen for writing the original and helping me understand the data file format! Using this program, you can translate from one language to another, or find synonyms, by translating from one language back to itself again. The program operates in two modes: exact match and, well, not so exact match!
If you have exact match turned off, then entering 'light' would find, say, 'daylight', 'delight', 'delighted', 'enlighten', 'light', etc. However, the program runs rather slowly in this mode! In fact, it ran so slowly that I made it multitask. Moving the pointer over the output window will show you how far it still has to go! You can press ESC to stop the search, if it has already found the word you want, or if you get fed up
With exact match on, the program will find what you ask for, or nothing! This does mean, however, that it runs much quicker. In fact, you rarely have to wait at all, unless there are lots of possible meanings for the word in question!
Using Ergane
When loaded, the program will install itself on the iconbar. Clicking menu over the icon allows you to choose the script (and keyboard mapping) to use. You can also clear the program, which will reduce memory requirements to a minimum, emptying all cached data.
If you click select on the icon, the main window, and script windows will open. Here you can choose the 'from' and 'to' languages. Clicking menu over the actual language icon allows you to get more information on it. At the moment, the information window doesn't parse the data very well (read not at all!). This will hopefully be fixed (improved at least) in the next version. If the caret is in the translate icon, you can click on letters in the script window to enter strange characters. The keyboard is also redefined, so if you find that you can't type properly, check which script you have selected!
If you close the output window, this can be reopened by clicking adjust on the iconbar icon. The output window will sometimes fail to update properly. Just grab the resize icon and that should fix it. Also, try 'wiping' over it with another window. This will (hopefully) be fixed in the next version.
Dictionary data files
You can use the standard Windows Ergane dictionary files, but when extracting them, you will have to make a slight change. Say you have the Dutch data file, and you want to install it. Just make a directory called 'Dutch' in the Data directory, and put the files in there, named as their extensions. So DUTCH.ES0 would be called ES0 in the directory 'Dutch'. If there are .TR? files, you can delete them, since this version of the program doesn't use them.
David O'Shea
So to sum up this issues DiscWorld looks like this...
Ergane
The complete translation system.
FinePix
The full size JPEG images from the review of the FinePix A210 camera.
Games
Four example games from the StrongGames review.
MakeHTML
The full source for the RISCWorld HTML maker program.
Modules
All the source code and the executables, from Brian Pickards series.
PD
All the latest PD, shareware and freeware releases from the PD column.
PowerBase
The latest version of PowerBase and the example files discussed in Derek Haslams article.
RDesktop
The excellent remote desktop viewer from eQ Research and development.
Scribble
Gavin Wraith's PDF generator and example files.
SGames
A demo version of the StrongGames CD front end, so you can see screen shots of all the games supplied.
Aaron Timbrell