Subject: Ottawa Info Preparation

From: Dan Eddleman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 93 11:37:15 EST

Forwarded message:
>From [email-masked]  Thu Apr  1 10:27:50 1993
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 93 10:28:10 EST
From: [email-masked] (Christopher P. Tully)
Message-Id: <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: ottawa info preparation

=======================================================================
1.8.2  HOW TO PREPARE INFORMATION FOR POSTING
=======================================================================

How to prepare information for posting.

This document is intended to be a preliminary guide to information
providers on how to format information on floppy disks for display on
the National Capital Freenet.  Only 3.5/5.25 inch IBM disks can be
accomodated at this time.

1.  Organize your information in chunks of one or two screens.  Format
    one chunk per file with lines width of less than 65 characters.
    Information must be stored as unformatted ASCII.

2.  The first line of each text file should be the title for the file.
    This title line will also appear in the menu that calls the file.

3.  Make  file names that are mnenonic of the file title.

4.  Organize the files into directories and subdirectories that reflect
    the menu structure.

5.  One file in each directory should be called menu.  Any
    other files in that directory should contain text that will be
    accessed by selections in the menu file on the same directory.

6.  When a menu refers to another menu, the subsequent menu should be
    in a directory below the first.

7.  Menu files contain five things (more really but you should only
    be concerned with these things at the moment):

    a.  Blank lines (which are ignored).

    b.  Lines that have a # character in column 1.  These are
	comments.

    c.  Lines that start with %l in column 1 and 2.  These are
	displayed when the menu is invoked.

    d.  Lines that begin with %e in columns 1 and 2 are the menu
	prompt.  A menu prompt that calls a menu should end with ...

    e.  Lines that start with %p p in columns 1-4 followed by a file
	name.  These cause the named file to be displayed.  Lines that
	begin %p $filename declane filname to be a menu itself and that
	menu will be displayed.  ie the file name of a menu file is
	preceeded by a $.

Example.  The menu item just above the one you are now using looks
like:

%l
%l   <<< The National Capital Freenet >>>
%l

%e About the National Capital Freenet
%p p freenet/about.ncf

%e NCF Organanizing committee Q & A (unmoderated)
%p nr ncf.qa

%e The National Capital Freenet Organizing Committee
%p p freenet/organizing.cte

%e Organizing Subcommittees...
%p $freenet/subs/menu

%e Position papers and Doucments on the FreeNet...
%p $freenet/papers/menu

Note the file names include the directory path (all this information is
in the freenet directory).

The files in the freenet directory are:

-rw-r--r--  1 root         1874 May 25 13:57 about.ncf
-rw-r--r--  1 root          382 Jul 10 15:56 menu
-rw-r--r--  1 root          783 May 25 14:14 organizing.cte
drwxr-xr-x  2 root          512 Jul 13 13:42 papers/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root          512 Jul  9 15:57 subs/

Note that the last two menu items invoke menus.  These are located in
sub-directories called subs and papers which are shown on the
Unix-style directory list with a d in column 1 and a / in the last
column.

The information you are reading in in the papers sub-directory whose
menu looks like the following (at the time of writing  ... moer papers
may have been added after this was written):

%l
%l   <<<   Papers and Documents on the FreeNet   >>>
%l

%e How to prepare information for the FreeNet
%p p freenet/papers/information

%e English-French, French-English Machine Translation
%p p freenet/papers/xlate

The directory list looks like:

-rw-r--r--  1 root         3095 Jul 13 13:56 information
-rw-r--r--  1 root          218 Jul 13 13:55 menu
-rw-r--r--  1 root         5066 Jul 10 15:51 xlate

Note the absence of any subdirectories since the menu does not
reference any other menus.

====================================================================
1.8.3  ENGLISH-FRENCH, FRENCH-ENGLISH MACHINE TRANSLATION
====================================================================

English-French, French-English Machine Translation

	I received some material from Dave Sutherland at the National
Capital Freenet.  In it was an article by Dorothy Phillips, Thomas
Whalen, et al on "The  Changing Face of Broadcasting..."

	I fully concur with the sentiments expressed in that article.
I have been  pursuing a similar objective, but in the area of
inter-lingual communications.  I  strongly feel, that with our current
constitutional problems we need communication  tools to allow citizens
of this country, from different linguistic backgrounds, to speak  to
each other in their own native tongues.  Only through communications
and  understanding of each other's  view points can we ever hope to
resolve the linguistic  problems that plague this great country of
ours.  To that end,  I have been doing  considerable research into
machine translation systems for mono-lingual users on   electronic
networks like FreeNet.

	The concept I have in mind, which I hope to turn into a VISION
2000 project, is the development of a machine translation system for
mono-lingual users  that will allow members of the public, of one
language group, to access networks  like FreeNet and converse with
other individuals who speak a different language.  Bulletin boards or
conferences could be set up where members of the community  could chat
about their different linguistic viewpoints on a range of topics,
including  the constitution, sports (the Leafs vs Les Habs), culture,
etc. Electronic pen-pals  could be set up for school kids so that they
can communicate to other kids in a  different language. The
possibilities are endless.

	I have recently attended the TMI-92 conference in Montreal and
I have been in correspondence with the MT people at CWARC regarding
this subject.  Related work is already being done in this area at
CompuServe and Carnegie- Mellon.  There are significant restrictions to
setting up such a service, due to the  limitations of the technology,
but I still think there is a real potential here to expand  the
communications horizon of all Canadians and develop new machine
translation  tools for the Canadian communications industry.

	To my mind the NC FreeNet would be an ideal test bed for the
necessary  research and development in this area.  There could be many
technological spin-offs  for Canadian industry in MT (Machine
Translation) products and services as well as  providing a valuable
service to the community at large.

	The major problem with MT today is its very limited use in
	general subject areas.  However, moderate success is being
achieved in what is called restricted domain authoring systems.
Machine translation on these systems works by  restricting the subject
area, topic, vocabulary and semantic structure of the author's
document.  They are ideally suited for electronic networks and
computers and not  pre-written documents.

	Carnegie-Mellon is doing pioneering work in this area with
their recent  $5,000,000 contract to translate all of Caterpillar
Tractor's service manuals.  The  important thing to remember here, is
that they are not translating existing manuals,  but they are setting
up authoring systems for writers of new manuals so that they will  be
written in a style that will make it easy for a computer to translate.
Simply stated,  the computer system prompts the author of a document
whenever they are writing in  style that is too convoluted for the
computer to understand.  Pop down menus, like  those in a spelling
checker appear whenever the computer cannot resolve ambiguities  in
meaning or vocabulary.

	Similar application work has been done at CWARC with their
CRITTER translation system.  My personal objective is to see if we can
extend this development work in restricted domain authoring systems to
a larger audience.  E-mail users are generally much more tolerant of
grammatical errors and so 100%  accuracy is not a requirement.  Those
familiar with USENET know that there are  hundreds of very technical
and restricted domain news groups.  Many would be ideal  candidates for
MT usage.  Other areas for this type of MT is EDI (Electronic Data
Interchange) which is a very restricted domain used for commercial
electronic  invoicing, ordering, etc.

	To my mind, electronic pen paling would be the first ideal
application.  Children's semantic structure is very simple and their
vocabularies are limited  compared to those of most adults.  I also
think this would be fertile ground for  starting the dialogue between
the linguistic dualities in Canada.

	If you think there is merit in this proposal, I would love to
hear from you.   As I mentioned above, I have a personal interest in a
project of this type.  Despite my  surname, I am essentially unilingual
English. I have two brothers, one who is  unilingual French (and a
avowed separatist) and another who is fluently bilingual.   Our family
is sort of a microcosm of Canada. But unlike most Canadian families,
all three of us have computers and e-mail.  Need  I say more.

	Regards

	Bill St. Arnaud, P.Eng.
	Project Officer
	Vision 2000
	567-2000
	email: [email-masked]

VISION 2000 is a private and public partnership formed in 1989.  Made
up of 38 key Canadian Communications and Information Technology
companies, research organizations, academia and governments. Vision
2000 aims are to accelerate innovation and foster collaboration in
"personal" communications and informaioon technology R&D, as well as to
introduce new Canadian products and and services to world markets.