aConCorde - v0.3 - README Andrew Roberts (16th April 2004) andyr [at] comp [dot] ac [dot] uk Overview ======== aConcorde is a multi-lingual concordance tool. Originally developed for native Arabic concordance, it posses basic concordance functionality, as well as English and Arabic interfaces. Written in Java, so will run on any platform that has the Java Runtime Environment installed (which is available for most major operating systems. It currently has the following features: * Full Arabic support (no need to transliterate to ASCII before concordance). * English and Arabic native interface * Multiplatform - runs on Linux and Windows (including non-Arabic Windows) - requires Java Runtime environment. (See support for help). * Supports Unicode (UTF-16), UTF8 and ASCII encoding. * Frequency analysis * Concordance can be sorted on left or right contexts Finally, aConCorde is free :) Installation ============ 1. Download the aConCorde utility from the project web page (http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/andyr/software/aConCorde). It will be bundled into a single zip archive, e.g, aConCorde-0.3.zip. 2. Unzip the file to a location on your system that you want to install the tool. 3. The files necessary for aConCorde are now on your system ready for use. Running aConCorde ================= NOTE: Before you can run aConCorde on your system, you must ensure that the Java Runtime Envinronment (version 1.4 or greater) is also installed on your computer. This can be easily downloaded from http://java.sun.com and installed. See the "What is Java?" section below for information about what Java is, and how to install it. To run aConCorde from the command line: 1. Go to the directory where aConCorde was installed (this will contain all the Java .class files). 2. Type: 'java ConcordanceGUI' (without the quotes) 3. If you want to start with the Arabic interface, type: 'java -Duser.language=ar ConcordanceGUI' (without the quotes) Windows users: To run aConCorde without using the command line, navigate to the aConCorde folder using My Computer or Explorer, and then double-click the file called 'aConCorde.bat'. This is a simple script that runs the above command line. Run 'aConCorde_ar.bat' to start with Arabic interface. You can make shortcuts to these .bat files from your desktop or Start menu for easier access. Limitations / Bugs ================== As you can see from the version number, this is a very early release. I thought that it would be better to release it anyway, even though it's far from a complete product. The release approach will be little and often. However, as a consequence of this early release there are also a number of shortcomings: * Save functionality doesn't work. It is in the code, but it's not linked the menus yet! Can still cut and paste however. * The 'display' menu items currently do nothing! * Swapping languages will close current corpus session. Therefore will need to ensure you are in the correct language before opening your corpus file. * Search box will only accept a single word, and not a phrase. * Can only have one corpus open at a time. * aConCorde does not yet know about corpus markup! Therefore, any markup, such as XML tags will be treated like normal words. * When in Arabic, the 'Sort by left context' option actually sorts the right, and 'Sort by right context' sorts by left! What is Java? ============= Java can be viewed as two things. Firstly, it is a programming language, and a fairly good one at that! It is designed and developed by Sun Microsystems (http://www.sun.com) by some of the best computer scientists and engineers. It has many advantages for software developers that has lead to Java becoming one of the most popular development languages currently in use. Secondly, it is a 'virtual machine'. Typically, when a developer writes some software, they have to compile their code. The compiler converts the program code into machine code, which is specific to the platform that you are using. For example, programs compiled for Windows do not work on Mac OS. If you want programs to run on other platforms, then the developer often has to spend a great amount of effort changing the source code to conform to the specifications of a given platform, and then compile, again! However, one of Java's main strengths is its ability to "write once, run anywhere". What this means is that when some software is written in Java, it can run on any platform, without the need of modification. Although, for the program to run, it needs the Java Virtual Machine. The Java Virtual Machine is a special piece of software written by the developers of Java. They have gone to great lengths to make it so that there is a version of the Virtual Machine for most major platforms. For example, you can get it for Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Solaris, IRIX, etc. Once you install a virtual machine for your particular platform, then you are ready to run Java applications. The Virtual Machine removes the need to compile an application to machine code for a specific platform. Instead, the Virtual Machine runs on top of a platform, and acts as an interpretor for the Java code. This is why, before you can run Java applications, you need the Java Virtual Machine. Upgrading or Installing Java ============================ All official Java resources are available from Sun's Java website (http://java.sun.com). For aConCorde, you need to have Java 1.4 or greater. If you already have Java installed, you can check its version by typing 'java -version' from a command line. If it is not version 1.4 or greater, then you will also need to install an up-to-date version of Java. When you go to the Java website, it can be a little overwhelming if you are not familar with Java. It is possible to find everything you need, however, Sun Microsystems have created an alternative site for those less interested in the technical aspects of Java. Goto http://java.com/en/index.jsp and you will see on the top right a panel containing "Free Download. Java software for the desktop." and below a button labelled "Get it now". If you click this butto, the website will automatically detect your operating system, and then direct you to a page specific to that platform. This page will contain a links for the latest version of the Java Virtual Machine (also known as Java Runtime Environment). Download this file, and then follow the installation instrustions that are also present on that download page. Contact ======= If you wish to contact the developer about aConCorde to suggest future features, bugs or anything that you want, please email me at: andyr [at] comp [dot] ac [dot] uk * Anti-spam format. Please remove all spaces, and replace '[at]' with the '@' symbol (no quotes), etc.