APDL Eductation Resources

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Say It v3.00 The Language Tutor "The computer literally speaks to you in the native tongue" This product is SHAREWARE. SHAREWARE means ONLY if you like it, do you pay for it. It is a way for you to examine the program before purchase. Shareware is a means for software firms to distribute and advertise their software at no cost to all corners of the globe. The result is that there are no advertising costs to pass on to you the consumer, hence the stuff is much less expensive. Sadly this great system is abused and some people don't pay for the goods, which forces the prices of software up. In other words, you may legally have this on your hard disc but please send us the registration fee. You can receive the latest copies of this program in your Internet mailbox at any point registered or not by sending a short note to mike@msmith.zynet.co.uk Who owns it?: ============= The sound samples and the program are copyright of © MD Smith 1993-1996 26 Grenville Road Saint Judes Plymouth PL4 9PY 0752-667599 mike@msmith.zynet.co.uk FIDO: 2:254/27.0 'Mike Smith' The SampPlayer module is copyright of David Radford. Special thanks to him for his permission to let the module 'stand alone'. SampPlayer Module is a part of !Player which plays compressed Armadeus sound samples. !Compress compresses them to 50% of their original size whereas, other compressors would only give you about a 10% savings. !Compress also uncompresses samples. !Player and !Compress are in the 'public domain', but are copyright of David Radford. Send me a disc and a stamp and I will send you these programs free of charge. FIDO: 2:250/219.0 'David Radford' Registration ============ To register this product send: £30.00 UK Send a cheque or postal order in your country's currency. Registration gives you a full site-licence automatically. I never have understood penalising your client, because they generally have more money or machines. The Creation of the Program: ============================ While I was working in a school one day I saw a foreign language teacher's aide quizzing a student on the meaning of spanish words in a corner of the classroom and the idea for the SayIt series was born. They were performing a task very similar to what this program does and I thought, "Gee, I can get a robot to do that!" I borrowed some sampling equipment (computerese for 'recording', 'cuz you don't actually record you just grab 'samples' of sounds) and began to experiment. My first experiments were very disappointing I found that only 40 spoken words could fit on an 800K floppy diskette. I nearly threw the idea in the bin, but I persevered for another two weeks and found all of the methods I would needed to create the program. The actual program, then called !Dis-le was written in a weekend, but used english words for the testing. I began to advertise in the newspaper for a french speaker. A very vivacious woman by the name of Catherine applied for the job. From the second I heard her voice on the answering machine I knew she was the right one for the job. We began the recording for !Dis- le and finished it in 5 sessions and 4 weeks later. I put the program on many of the BBS's and sent a number of copies to the magazines, but it took 3 months before anything happened. The program was picked up by one of the computing magazines and the rest is basically history. The program began to snowball and at this writing 2 and a half years down the line the program is on its tenth national write-up with another expected soon. It is probably one of the most widely used modern language resources in schools and by private individuals in England. It is most definitely my all time greatest hit. If there is such a thing in computer software. One of the sad parts is that in the 3 months it took to get the project off the ground Catherine became disillusioned with the project and moved away up north with her husband two days before the first magazine article. I think she thought the project would go nowhere and has not yet bothered to contact me with her new address. Hence her royalties are sitting in a bank account drawing interest. This means that the new french speaker is now Jean-François. After a while I began to receive complaints from teachers that the word set didn't match that of the GCSE word list and they weren't organised by topics. Therefore, step I added the 2200 words and they now match of the 1994 GCSE word list. Another complaint I got was that it wasn't varied enough and needed a bit more to it so I have now added: A Training Mode Multi-Choice Quiz Spelling Tester Dictionary Face Behind the Voice Word Search Mix 'n' Match Getting Help: ============= The SayIt series has been programmed to respond to Acorn's !Help program found on the App disc in Risc-OS 2 and on the icon bar in Risc-OS 3+. All computer terms described in the dictionary at the end of this manual. In an effort to save you the user money I have not produced a written manual. A manual will cost each customer about £6. Sadly the cost has to be passed on to you the consumer so I am only producing the manual in this Help file. I am hoping this will work as well and save you about £6. If you need a printed manual, write or phone and we will work something out. The program in this, the third version, has also had a lot of changes and I fear that there will be many mistakes or omissions, as well as bugs, so I am a bit hesitant to boil anything in oil yet. If you need additional help with SayIt, phone or write, even unregistered users will receive a warm welcome. Installation: ============= There are a number of discs. Each of the discs have a portion of the program. Decide where you want the program to go and drag the first bit of the program there. It doesn't matter about the order you stick the discs in the machine. It also doesn't matter if you drag a disc there twice, but don't skip one and don't hold down shift when you are performing the copy! When the first disc is finished insert the next one and drag the program to the same spot. Keep up the process until all of the discs have been fed into the machine. The computer will not prompt you, other than the copy process will be complete when all of the information is transferred from each disc. Machine Requirements: ===================== This program will require a hard disc with about 10 megabytes of free disc space. You will only be able to run it on very fast networks like Nexus or Ethernet. Econet will not suffice, it will work for the dictionary though. A minimum of 4Mb RAM will be needed as well. How to work the program: ======================== Main Activity Window When the program loads a flag of the respective country will load on the icon bar. If you click the middle (menu) button over this icon you will have a list of three choices: Info, Earphones, Quit 'Quit' will stop the program. Neat huh? 'Earphones' will send all of the sound of the program only to the Archimedes headphone socket in the back of the computer. This is for late night or classroom study. If you have one of these super-duper monitors with a speaker in it, permanently wired to the computer this will not work, nor will it work with a RiscPC or above. Thankfully, Acorn finally got their act together and when you plug in headphones on a RiscPC you automatically disable the sound. The Earphone mechanism will not interrupt the other parts of the Archimedes sound system, like the 'error beep'. It only redirects the speaking of the SayIt Series. Info will open a window explaining who wrote the program, its status, what the purpose of the program is, and most important what version you have and the day it was compiled. Opening the Main window: ======================== Clicking the mouse on the flag on the icon bar will pop up a window. You have the title, the copyright message and six options: Training Mode, Multi-choice, Spelling Test, Dictionary, the Voice, Word Search, Mix 'n' Match or Quit. A whole section is devoted to each one of these sections but in brief: The training mode will cycle through the spoken words of the topics you have chosen allowing you to hear them and see the translation. No score is kept at this point. At any point you can ask to see the entire single word entry. And you can ask to have the word repeated. The multi-choice section quizzes you on the meanings of words. There is no time limit and a score is kept, if you are interested. The spelling test will quiz you on how words are spelled. There is a give-up option and a score. The dictionary will allow a user to search for a word. They can see the meaning and there is a 1:4 chance that a pronunciation will accompany the word. The user has about 12 different ways to find the word. The voice is literally this, the face behind the voice and a little synopsis of the speaker. The computer will say hello and good-bye on entry and exit. If this isn't gimmicky....what is? The word search routine will produce a 14 x 14 grid of letters. It is up to you to detect 15 words hidden in the text. The words may be backward, normal, or diagonal, or a combination of two of these options. There are two separate games, one will display the foreign language words to find the herder of the two will display the french and the student then has to find that word via translation. The mix and match will give you 10 words and then unscramble these on screen. You are then given an indefinite amount of time to drag the correct foreign word to the correct English word. The Quit option will stop the program. It doesn’t follow the normal protocols of Acorn machines but I figure that most users will not be used to using the computer. If click menu over the main activity window you will have a list of about 15 topics to choose from. There is also a higher and lower level to choose from. There are about 45 actual topics but to make things more simplistic I have classed the 'sub-topics' with their respective 'topics'. By default all of the topics are selected. You must deselect the topics you aren't interested in. If you click the Select button on the mouse the menu will close. If you click the Adjust button on the mouse the menu will remain open and allow a second choice. This should be standard with all Acorn software. You must be careful not to deselect ALL topics. This will cause the computer to start looking for a list of four words from a list of zero words and will literally take forever, searching endlessly and make the computer appear to freeze or crash. Those users with a Risc PC can press Alt+Break to cease this one problem. Novice users skip the next couple of paragraphs. Adventurous users only: ======================= The Messages file contains the menu structure for this program. It is stored in Desklib messages format in the application directory.samples.language_you_are_working_in under: menu.wmenu:!Personal ID,!Family,!Home,!Geographical & Weather,!Travel/Transport, !Holiday, !Accommodation, !Food, !Shopping,!Service, !Health, !Entertainment, !Relations,!Education, !Language, !Money| !Lower Level Words, !Higher Level Words each of the !'s mean tick and if you want to completely disallow an option place a '~' char in place of the '!'. This will allow you to customise your version of the program. At this writing the messages file is in English rather than the working language. If you want you could translate the messages file to the working language. Do not upset the order of the topics as they relate the the single letter codes in the topics field of the database. The database is stored as Words in the same directory. The file format is: foreign word<linefeed> english word<linefeed> word type & plural<linefeed> (word type code x 100) + plural code (0 at the moment) topics<linefeed> sound<linefeed> etc. Training Mode: ============== As was said earlier, the training mode will cycle through the spoken words of the topics you have chosen allowing you to hear them and see the translation. No score is kept at this point. At any point you can ask to see the entire single word entry. And you can ask to have the word repeated. The Window itself: ================== The window will open and say a word. You have an indefinite amount of time to study the word. Clicking menu over this window will have no effect. Foreign Word Icon: ================== In the example of the manual clicking either Adjust or Select on the up-raised button will produce the single word entry window to open. See the single word entry bit further down to find out more about it. English Word Icon: ================== The training mode window has immediately below the word 'valise' the translation 'suitcase'. Clicking on this will have no effect. Next Icon: ========== This cycles through to the next word. The program has an intelligent mechanism built in at this point to disallow you hearing the same word twice until you have heard all of the words. It may happen from time to time that you do hear the same word twice due to the fact the formula that the computer goes by is somewhat simplistic, but the odds are greatly reduced. Repeat Icon: ============ If you click on the Repeat button the computer will repeat the word. There is no scoring for this and you will not be penalised at any point for asking to hear a word repeated. Remember this is the training section. This button is for that time someone interrupted you or you just didn't hear the word. Stop Icon: ========== This will take the computer back to the main activity icon and stop the present section. The Multi-Choice Quiz Game: =========================== This is a left over from !Linguist, the original !Dis-le and the rest of the SayIt Series. It has been completely redesigned. One of the most notable features is the absence of the scoreboard. The Scoreboard: =============== There is a scoreboard. There are two ways to view it. Both mechanisms work by pressing the middle button over the spelling window or the multi-choice window. When you click the middle button over one of these windows a menu will come up, with only one option 'Score'. If you select 'Score' the scoreboard will remain open until you manually close it. If you follow the arrow to the right the scoreboard will only remain open until the next time you click somewhere other than the scoreboard itself. Clicking on any bit of the scoreboard will be a complete waste of time. It is only displays information. A teacher can use this to gauge the success or failure of a student. After awhile you learn to realise how many tries a student can get through, and the computer won't lie about the score. Mind you this doesn't stop a student clicking on New Game. The scoreboard reads correct, wrong, attempts, and percentage in that order from top to bottom. You should try to achieve above 70% at all times. Where I come from (the USA) the grading is as follows: A.........90% - 100% (excellent) B.........80% - 89% (good) C.........70% - 79% (satisfactory) D.........60% - 69% (poor) F..........59% or below (failing) The Actual Multi-Choice Quiz: ============================= In the recessed icon is a foreign word. The object is to choose which one of the four buttons has the right answer and to click on that button with the Select button. If you click the right answer the speaker will tell you so with a 'praise phrase' and will then move on to the next word. If you are wrong the computer will tell you so with a 'condemning phrase' and will not move on the the next word. You have an undetermined amount of time to choose an answer. You will be penalised for making the wrong guess but not for taking your time. It is assumed that the user could wish to be doing other tasks at the same time and this is just a time filler. Under the old game there were seven rights phrases and seven wrong. This number has now been increased to ten each. Hide Word Tick Box: =================== This will force the foreign word to be replaced by seven asterisks. There will always be seven stars, and it has no bearing on how many letters are in the word. The object of hiding the word is so that you, the user, have no other clues to go by than just the sound of the word. Sometimes words can be figured out by just looking at the spelling of the word and comparing it to the list. ADVANCED USERS HINT: If you have a template editor and would like the game to always start in hidden word mode just turn on the button in the template editor and save the file back. Default is off. Repeat Icon: ============ If you click on the Repeat button the computer will repeat the word. There is no scoring for this and you will not be penalised at any point for asking to hear a word repeated. This button is for that time someone interrupted you or you just didn't hear the word. If the user is using the 'hidden mode', it will more than likely be needful to repeat words at any given time especially if you don't have a good set of speakers. New Game Icon: ============== This simply resets the scoreboard to zero and has the effect of starting a new game. Stop Icon: ========== This will take the computer back to the main activity panel and stop the present section. The Spelling Test: ================== As someone who doesn't speak a word of French I find this a very frustrating exercise and I have yet to try it with English, Swedish, Chinese, Danish, German, or Norwegian, where I can get the feel of it, so while I believe it works but this may be the buggiest section. If you haven't read it yet, please read the section entitled scoreboard. When the window opens the computer will say a word you have to put the correct spelling into the writable icon. When you think you have done so click on OK or press the return key. If you are right the computer will tell you so with a 'praise phrase' and will then move on to the next word. If you are wrong the computer will tell you so with a 'condemning phrase' and will not move on the the next word. You have an indefinite amount of time to choose an answer. You will be penalised for making the wrong guess but not for taking your time. Under the old game there were seven rights phrases and seven wrong. This number has now been increased to ten each. There is an additional phrase on the spelling called 'nearly'. You will get this one phrase if more than 50% of the word is spelled correctly, but is still spelled wrong. New Game Icon: ============== This simply resets the scoreboard to zero and has the effect of starting a new game. Repeat Icon: ============ If you click on the Repeat button the computer will repeat the word. There is no scoring for this and you will not be penalised at any point for asking to hear a word repeated. This button is for that time someone interrupted you or you just didn't hear the word. Keys Icon: This will open another window which acts very much like !Chars. It is a poor substitute for it. I would encourage your students to use !Chars instead. This will give the user a chance to type international keys. At the moment this will append the key to the back of the word only, it won't take account of where the cursor is. This will be fixed in one of the next two releases. For the general student this will not pose a problem as they will click the key when they need it. ADVENTUROUS USERS ONLY: ======================= The Messages file contains the international key string for this program. It is stored in Desklib messages format in the application directory.samples.language_you_are_working_in under: int.keys:àáâäçèéêëìíîñòóôöùúûüßææø You can replace these characters with any you desire but they MUST 25 character long when you are done. Give-up Icon: ============= This will put the answer in the writable icon. You will have an indefinite period to examine the word and you could also ask to have the word repeated to give you the feel of the word. When you are finished you simply click on the OK button or press return. Hint: If there is a gold band around an icon it means that you can press return instead, if your window has claimed the caret (the title bar is yellow). Stop Icon: =========== This will take the computer back to the main activity icon and stop the present section. OK Icon: ======== When you are finished you simply click on the OK button or press return. Hint: If there is a gold band around an icon it means that you can press return instead, if your window has claimed the caret (the title bar is yellow). If you are correct the computer will give you a 'praise phrase' and move on to the next word. If you are wrong the computer will give you a 'condemning phrase' and not move on to the next word. The scoreboard will be adjusted accordingly. The Word Search =============== The word search program is a simple word search program which will allow the student to find 15 words in a 14 x 14 grid. Basically there are two parts to this exercise the first is the easier of the two. The computer will literally tell the student which word he or she is looking for. The second will display the English words and the student must first translate the word and then find it in the square, or find a french word and see if it appears in the list. When the window flies open you will see all of the letters before you. The program will hide words right to left, left to right, up and down, down and up, diagonal up forward, diagonal up backward, diagonal down forward, and last but not least diagonal down backward. The program is merciless in the fact it isn't lenient in the directions is picks. It also crams alot in a tiny space. Under the right circumstances the computer could try up to 15,000 times to put 15 words in 196 squares. A second window called the words window will open when the Word Search window does. It lists the words you are looking for. I doubt it will be difficult to invent words that are in the foreign language but if you try to click on them the computer will count them as wrong. To begin the exercise click on one square. If the square is valid it will go grey. If it isn't the computer will beep. Once you have found an entire word you can click on the Words window and the will be marked. This is meant to be nothing more than a reminder, the computer will not mark out the words automatically. You carry on until all the words have been found. The Scoreboard: ============== Press the middle (menu) button on the mouse over this window. It is either a pop-up or full-time window. See above under Scoreboard for more information. Give-up Icon: ============= By pressing this button the computer will reveal the answer, all invalid letters will be blanked out revealing only the valid ones. New Game Icon: =========== This will start a whole new game. All of the words and letters will be remixed and the score set back to zero. Words Icon: =========== The words window may get in the way from time to time and it will be needful to close it. This button re-opens the window. Stop Icon: ========== This will stop the game and return you to the main activities window, The Mix 'n' Match Exercise ========================== The Mix 'n' Match Exercise will display ten foreign words and their ten English words. The computer will mix them up prior to display. Your job is to drag the correct English word to the correct foreign word. When you have done so the exercise ends. Each time you get a word/ combination right the computer will tell you so and the pairs will rearrange and go grey. When you get it wrong the computer will tell you so and not much else will happen. The Scoreboard: ============== Press the middle (menu) button on the mouse over this window. It is either a pop-up or full-time window. See above under Scoreboard for more information. New Game Icon: =========== This will start a whole new game. All of the words and letters will be remixed and the score set back to zero. Stop Icon: ========== This will stop the game and return you to the main activities window, The Dictionary: =============== The purpose of the dictionary is to give the user an online database of spoken words. As an added bonus there are additional unspoken words. Eventually it is my hope that the unspoken words will be spoken too. There are plans afoot to put this on to CD-ROM, but I understand that magneto-optical may over take CD-ROM in the next year and a half. My understanding is as well that Microsoft are now gearing up and buying the machinery to produce their software solely on magneto- optical. There is talk of everyone having 250 megabyte floppy disc drives, soon. The dictionary is one of the more complicated features of the program. When you select the dictionary icon. You will go to the 'search' window. Here the computer wants you to select criteria to perform a search. First of all you will need to type in a 'key' (something for the computer to search for). For example, suppose you want to search for 'journal' in French. You would type 'journal' and press return or click on the 'Search' button. The computer will come back and say it has found two answers, Journal & Journalier. You must though ensure if you are searching for a French word you need the French button ticked. If you are searching for an English word you must have the English button ticked. Important: when you switch language direction (ie from French to English and back again) the computer will egg-timer, freeze, but only momentarily. The computer is resorting the entire dictionary for display purposes. It may take as long as 40 seconds, so be patient and try to do all of your searching on one side first and then the other. If the computer finds more than one match you will open the dictionary page. It is meant to represent a page in a dictionary. In this dictionary you can move backward and forward through the pages in leaps of 10's or 1's. If you come to the end or the beginning of the dictionary the computer will only let you go as far as there are pages, but it will take you as far as it can. This dictionary is unique in the fact that it only shows you the words you want. There is no thumbing through pages and pages of mindless words. The dictionary page will report how many words are in its dictionary and how many matches you found with the last 'key'. It also reports what page you are on and how many pages you have total. All words with a sound are marked by a cross/dagger. If the computer only finds one match you will be taken directly to the single entry page. If you are on the dictionary page you can see the individual entry for that word by simply clicking on it. From the single entry page you can request the computer to say the word or hear it pronounced. If the button is greyed or it refuses to speak the word there is a problem with that word. There are eight types of searches you can perform: is equal to: this will report those words which are an exact match of the 'key'. For example: journal will only report journal and not journalier. contains: will find journal with a 'key' of 'our' begins with: will find journal with a 'key' of 'jo' ends with: will find journal with a 'key' of 'al' sounds like: will find snake with a 'key' of 'snack'. The first letters must match sounds near: will find cynic with a 'key' of 'snake' has in it: will find sing and go with a 'key' of 'gns' show all: will find every word in the dictionary. You have two more options to broaden the search for the word. Strip Accents will convert café to cafe, Häuse to Hause, and so forth. Omit Found will reverse the find. First it goes through and searches for what you said not to and then everything that was found becomes not found and everything not found is found. Stop Icon: This will take the computer back to the main activity icon and stop the present section. Search Icon: This executes the search. Notice the gold band, this means pressing the return key has the same effect. The Voice I have purchased talk tapes in the past where you feel the person speaking definitely has an english accent. I assure you that all speakers in the SayIt series are native to that language, and that the language they speak is their mother tongue. I have been assured that they have no speech impediments and speak a 'main stream' dialect of that language (ie for english you will not have someone with a southern USA drawl). I have also included this to give a more personal aspect to the program. OK Icon: This will take the computer back to the main activity icon and stop the present section. The Quit Button Well, humm, I don't think I am going to enter into a 5 week dissertation on this one. Adding your own words Not for novice users It is possible to add your own words. You need a microphone and sampling software. The samples must start life as Armadeus files. Each word must be cut into a separate file, and must be titled equal to the first ten characters of the word. Spaces are replaced with Hard Spaces (Alt+Space bar), because the filing system disallows space characters Once you have words in Armadeus file type store them in a directory. When you have all of the words you require. Drop the directory on to the !Compress icon on the icon bar. !Compress will batch process all of the sound samples in that directory. !Compress software is available from me free of charge with a disc and a stamp, or £1 for disc and P&P. When the computer has compressed the sound samples sort the files alphabetically into the samples directories inside the application. Each letter may only have 4 directories to hold each letter (so, 4 x 77 words). Inform the file Words of the existence of the new samples by inserting data in the format: foreign word<linefeed> english word<linefeed> word type & plural<linefeed> (word type code x 100) + plural code (0 at the moment) topics<linefeed> 'APap' - uppercase is lower level, lower case is higher level, a = 1st, p=last sound<linefeed> 'Y' = sound exists all others discounted. etc. You are done. Bob's your uncle, piece of cake. There is an upper limit of 9,000 words, at the moment. The computer counts the words of dictionary automatically as it loads the file. You can type these words you wish to add to a database, save out the file as CSV (Comma Separated Values). Strip the quotation marks and convert the commas to linefeeds. Notice Regarding New Template Policy (17-Sep-1994) After getting my new Risc PC I have adopted a new policy regarding windows and the use of anti-aliased fonts. Prior to the introduction of Risc OS 3 my feelings were that you could not ensure that a user would have specific font types to include them in a window. Therefore I simply used System Font. With the introduction of Risc OS 3 my feelings were that I could now rely on either Corpus, Homerton, or Trinity, being present, and started trying to give my windows a 'cleaner' look by using one or a combination of the above. Sadly, this meant having having two template/ window files for each program. With the introduction of Risc OS 3.5 on my Risc PC, Acorn have now made it so that ALL windows use anti-alias fonts and the user now chooses which he/she prefers. Since this simplifies the creation of a template and hence the program giving the user what they want rather than what I want ALL programs of mine are reverting back to System Font. I ASSUME that one day soon a similar feature will be available for all Arc users, and am starting to become prepared for that day. So in the meantime, all users with Risc-OS 3.0, 3.1, sorry you're back to the Lego/ Duplo-look. And my programs will refuse to support anti- aliased fonts in templates. Copyright Information This program is commercial software Therefore, passing it on to friends, use on secondary machines off premises, selling by unauthorised distributors, and general stealing of this software is prohibited. Only registered users may 'part out' the program for their private use. The SampPlayer module IS NOT PD and must not be separated from !Player or any of the !SayIt series. David Radford has been kind enough to give special permission to me for this purpose, for which I am forever in his debt. !Dis-le 1 & 2 were shareware. PD Libraries are NOT allowed to pass on version 3.0+ but they may purchase the full program and sell it off for which they will receive a standard retailer's discount. ** FRENCH INCORRECT PHRASES ** ============================== Foreign Word English Word Sample Name Ce n'est pas ça ! It's not that! W5 Erreur ! Mistake! W6 Faux ! Wrong! W1 Incorrect ! Incorrect! W2 Inexact ! Not quite right! W3 Mauvais ! Sorry! W4 Mauvaise réponse ! Wrong answer! W8 MMM-MMM-MMM Close but no cigar. W7 Non ! No! W0 Nul ! Zero right! W9 Presque ! Nearly Right!† W99 † This is a special sound sample. If you get this one you have over half of the letters in the spelling quiz. ** FRENCH INCORRECT PHRASES ** ============================== Foreign Word English Word Sample Name Bon ! Good! R8 Bonne réponse Good answer! R3 C'est bien ! (It is) Good! R2 C'est vrai ! It's true! R6 Exact ! Exact! R9 Juste ! Exactly! R7 Oui Yes R0 Super ! Super! R5 très bien ! Very good! R4 Tu as raison ! You're right! R1 Dictionary of Computer Terms Adjust - Gudsundheit! This is the last or right-hand most button of the mouse. See your user's manual. Armadeus - is a special type of file type. It is similar to the fact that a sprite file differs from a draw file. An Armadeus sound sample describes a special type of sound recording. For you techies out there, the file format is first byte * 100 equals playing speed and the remainder is the raw data jammed through the speaker. BBS - Bulletin Board System. A computer left on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with a modem attached. Computer people can call this special computer and exchange ideas, send mail, messages, put on or pull off a computer program. These are generally free to access and are run by people who do it for a hobby. These same said individuals are like radio hams only they use telephone lines. BBS's generally have up to date information on the newest ideas in computing. The magazines watch them and it is this information they report on two months hence. Claimed the Caret - Sadly the computer is not psychic and with all of these windows flying around the poor computer doesn't know which window to give the letters from the keyboard to unless you have Claimed the Caret. You do this by clicking in the window. When the title bar goes yellow you have Claimed the Caret or received 'input focus' Commercial - This product is for sale. You are not allowed to be in possession of the program unless you have paid for it. The author receives no reward for producing the software other than the sales he makes off of it. He copyrights his efforts, if you duplicate it prior to you paying for it you are in breach of the copyright law. Compile - Compiling in computer terms is the act of translating the programming instructions in this case, the C programming language to a language the computer can understand called machine code. This is important because one of the instructions in !Dis-le v3 automatically inserts the date when this particular set of instructions were formulated into the Info window. Any bugs you have are related to that version. Compressed - Literally a compression routine takes a bits of computer data and squashes them to half their size. It allows programmers to store twice as much data on a disc and saves money in producing and storing data for you and me. Compression is simply a mathematical method of coding data. If you compress data you need the uncompressor to work. A very crued example of compression is via substitution. Take a word like 'street'. 'Str' and 'ee' both appear frequently in english text. If we substituted 'str' for '*' and 'ee' for #, street would become '*#t'. We have a savings of 50% going from 6 letters down to 3. This is important to Dis-le because all of the sound samples are compressed otherwise the program wouldn't even fit in most peoples computers. They are decompressed before each playing of a recording but it happens so fast you don't know it. Computerese - the dialect of english spoken by computer nerds in order to express ideas not understood in Shakespeare's day, or 1994 for that matter. FIDO - is an addressing system for people with modems. This is part of the information super-highway people talk about. Kinda' like Telex but a different system. Letters can be mailed all over the world for free using E-mail and is a much nicer way to communicate. Icon - this word means symbol. This manual and the program will often interchange icon for button or box. RISC-OS uses many icons or symbols to represent ideas which would take too much room if they were written out. This illustration contains many of the icons used by the program (ie. push-to back, close icon, toggle size, the arrows and slider icons, radio buttons, button, gold band buttons, and writable icons.) Icon bar - this thing. Magneto-optical as form of data storage. It is a cross between CD-ROM and floppy disc. It is feasible at the moment to store 128 Mb on a 3.5 inch disc. Megabyte - a unit of measurement. Roughly it equates to one million letters or 277 pages of typed text. Menu - The middle button on the mouse, or the thing that pops up when you press the middle button on the mouse. See your user's manual. Module - a small, independent section of the programming code, usually shared by a number of programs. In Dis-le v3 the Sampplayer module is the engine that actually plays the recordings. Each time you hear a recording the program actually halts and allows Sampplayer to take over briefly and then Sampplayer returns control to Dis-le. If a module was a human it would be referred to as an assistant. Public Domain - the author of the program doesn't desire to retain the copyright and wants no financial reward for his efforts. You are legally allowed to do with the program what you wish, alter it, sell it, pass it around, and yes, put your name on it and then copyright it yourself, unless the author requests otherwise. Registration - tell the author of the software that you want to use his software and pay the required fee in order to do so. Select - This is the first or the left-hand most button of the mouse. See your user's manual. Shareware means ONLY if you like it, do you pay for it. It is a way for you to examine the program before purchase. Shareware is a means for software firms to distribute and advertise their software at no cost to all corners of the globe by allowing it to pass from friend to friend, individual to individual without the fear of legal repercussions, like those posed with commercial software. The result is that there are no advertising costs to pass on to you the consumer. Hence the stuff is much less expensive. Sadly this great system is abused and some people don't pay for the goods, which forces the prices of software up. Site-Licence - generally when you buy a program it allows you to use the program anywhere on property you own. A school or office may use the program anywhere on that premise after they purchase the software, but they may not take it to Joe's or the boss' house. This is looked on as an infraction of the copyright law and you are in breach. Basically it means a school with 171 computers doesn't have to buy 171 licences. Generally a site- licence is 3 times the normal fee. Sound Samples - This entire program is made up of sound samples without them the program would not exist. A sound sample is the snippet of recorded speech you hear. It is not the playing of it. It is the actual recording just like the a track of a record only much smaller. The recordings are in files inside the program. At this writing the program is made up of over 2300 data files. Uncompress - refer to the bit about compression. User - the person driving the computer. Writable Icon - usually a white box. You are able to type into this field/box. When you click on it with Select the red cursor should appear generally in the center.