TACT:
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS COMPUTING TOOLS
README FILE
A. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAMS
B. DEVELOPMENT GROUP FOR THE TACT SYSTEM
C. TACT DISTRIBUTION BY POST
D. GOPHER & ANONYMOUS FTP ACCESS TO TACT VERS. 2.1
E. SPONSORS
F. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
G. HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS
H. COPYRIGHT AND COPYING OF TACT
I. COST
J. DOCUMENTATION
K. VERSIONS
L. FILES IN CURRENT VERSION
M. INSTALLATION
N. TACT AND DISPLAY SCREENS
O. SETTING TACTPATH
P. USING TACT WITH WINDOWStm
Q. USING TACT WITH A NETWORK
R. EMS SUPPORT
S. ENVIRONMENT SPACE
T. .TDB FILES CREATED PRIOR TO VERSION 2.0
U. CHANGES FROM VERSION 1.2 to VERSION 2.1
V. NON-TACT FILES
W. BUG REPORTS
X. FUTURE UPGRADES FOR TACT
Y. INFORMATION ABOUT TACT APPLICATIONS
Z. RESPONSIBILITY STATEMENT
**************************************************************
* A. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAMS *
**************************************************************
TACT (Text Analysis Computing Tools), a
system of 16 programs for MS-DOS, is designed to do text-retrieval
and analysis on literary works. Typically, researchers use
TACT to retrieve occurrences of a word, word pattern, or
word combination. Output takes the form of a concordance, a list,
or a table. Programs also can do simple kinds of analysis, such as
sorted frequencies of letters, words or phrases, type-token
statistics, or ranking of collocates to a word by their strength of
association.
TACT is intended for individual literary texts,
or small to mid-size groups of such texts, such as Chaucer's
poetry, Francis Bacon's Essays, Shakespeare's plays,
Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, John Irving's
The Cider House Rules, similar works in French, German,
Italian, Spanish, Latin, and other modern European languages or
languages using a roman alphabet, and classical Greek. Using
TACT for large corpora can raise problems best handled by
software like ICAME Lexa or Open Text Systems Pat.
Processing a text with TACT normally begins when the
researcher tags or marks up an ASCII copy of the text. In most
instances, mark-up helps the researcher do analysis afterwards.
The researcher first uses a text-editor to insert these tags,
usually within diamond-bracket delimiters. This mark-up helps one
to refine word-selections and to provide reference citations to
retrieved passages. In a play, for example, acts, scenes, and
speeches are obvious things to mark; in a novel, chapters; in a
narrative poem, books and stanzas; in a lexicon, subdivisions of
the entry; and so forth. The researcher may also, however, want to
mark proper names (of people and places), episodes, date, location,
audience, narrative mode, theme, etc. For instance, words may be
retrieved by speaker if the original text includes a tag before
each passage that is spoken by someone different.
The researcher may also employ four programs, Preproc,
Makedct, Tagtext, and Satdct, to add
tags to each word of the ASCII text. These include the word's
lemma (the dictionary form of the word), part-of-speech, or
conceptual label.
The TACT system is multilingual. In order to display
foreign languages, it supports the extended ASCII character set of
the IBM PC, and with other font-editing tools, its capabilities
can be extended to other modern European languages, such as French,
German, and Greek. (Hebrew, Arabic, Cyrillic, and languages such
as Chinese are beyond its present design.) It supports multilingual
analysis as well by allowing for proper alphabetization, convenient
keyboard entry, and printing on devices that require special
"escape codes" to produce non-ASCII characters -- even if these
sequences are different from those that would be used to enter the
character from the keyboard, or display it on screen.
Once the text is marked up, Makebase converts it into
a database for efficient retrieval. Makebase invites the
researcher to define, interactively, the alphabet and its collation
sequence, special characters, and the reference tags used for
markup. Use a word-processor or text editor to divide large texts
into smaller files for sequential processing by a batch file you
create with Buildbat. This batch file uses both Makebase
and a second program, Mergebas, to create a large textual
database out of smaller ones.
After Makebase creates the textual database (or .TDB
file) out of the ASCII text file, a researcher may employ six
programs to retrieve information from, or to analyse, that text.
Most researchers begin with Usebase, which allows one
to select a word, a group of words, or a word-pattern, and then to
display it in five ways: a keyword-in-context (KWIC) concordance,
a variable-context concordance, the whole text, an occurrence-
distribution graph, and a table of collocates. The collocate table
shows all words that co-occur with the queried word, words or word-
pattern and orders those collocates by strength of association.
Displays in Usebase are linked so that, for example, the
researcher can go directly from a position in a distribution graph
to the text it represents. Any display may also be modified in
various ways.
Working with the database, Usebase can present a
complete list of words from which a subset for retrieval may be
selected, one word at a time. Through what is called "regular
expression" capability, the researcher may also write a query
according to a pattern of characters, including "wildcards" (for
example, all words beginning with the letter "a" and ending with
"ed" or "ing"). Queries may also contain refinements called
"selectors" that specify (a) proximity or collocation (two or more
words found together within a user-specified span of words), (b)
similarity (in spelling), (c) frequency of occurrence, and (d) a
condition related to whether or not words or patterns have one or
more tag attributes in the markup. All queries may be kept in one
or more ASCII files external to the program, from which queries may
be selected; thus, for example, the researcher can construct a
lexicon of words and expressions in such a file.
Once a set of words has been selected by whatever means, it
can be saved within Usebase as a "group". Groups can in
turn be combined to form other groups. Thus, for example, all
words and expressions the researcher regards as concerning the
semantic field "earth" can be saved as the group "earthgrp" and
then be combined with the groups "airgrp", "firegrp" and "watergrp"
to produce the group "4elementsgrp". Group names can be included
within queries as easily as words, so that, for example, a
researcher could ask to see all passages in which "airgrp" words
occur within two lines of "firegrp" words. Groups are really
collections of "locations" in a text; and so groups are specific to
one text. However, they may be saved in a group index (.GIX) file
for reuse. Unlike groups, queries stored in an external file are
independent of any one textual database.
When creating a group from a query, the user can examine all
retrieved citations in the text and choose which to include or
exclude. This ability to choose by context can eliminate
homographs and produce lemmatized groups.
Four other TACT programs, like Usebase,
operate off the textual database. (1) Collgen lists
all repeating fixed phrases and all node-collocate pairs (two
words that occur more than once near to one another in the text).
(2) TACTstat produces type-token statistics for word-
length and word-frequency. (3) TACTfreq produces
alphabetical, reverse alphabetical, and descending-frequency word-
lists. (4) Anagrams discovers anagrams of words in which
the user has some interest.
Fcompare compares ASCII lines (optionally consisting of one
or more tab-delimited fields) from two files and outputs three files
that list which lines are shared and which not. Preproc can be
used to generate the word-lists intended for input to Fcompare.
TACTsort sorts the lines of an ASCII file (optionally using a
tab-delimited field as the key). All three of the above programs use the
TACT sort order specified by an existing .MKS file, or by the
DEFAULT.MKS file.
Most TACT-system programs will output lists, tables,
graphs and other displays as ASCII files that can in turn be
imported into database management systems, spreadsheet programs,
and wordprocessors for post-processing of many kinds.
**************************************************************
* DEVELOPMENT GROUP FOR THE TACT SYSTEM *
**************************************************************
TACT is owned and managed by the University of Toronto and
the following principals of the TACT Group, all members of the
University:
John Bradley: Computing and Communications
Lidio Presutti: Humanities Programmer, Computing and Communications
(1983-1991)
Michael Stairs: Centre for Computing in the Humanities, Faculty of
Arts and Science
Ian Lancashire: Department of English
Full credits may be found in each program by pressing F6, or in the
case of UseBase, Ctrl-F1. The credits for the Install program are as
follows:
PRINCIPAL FOR INSTALL 2.1
Michael Stairs*** - Designer-Programmer, Vers 2.1
Copyright for this program is held by the University of Toronto
and the above named principal of the {B}TACT{N} Group, all
members of the University. The system is managed by the
{B}TACT Group{N}, which includes all principals and the
following University members:
John Bradley, UTCC, project manager, principal
designer and founding system architect (1984--mid-92)
Edward Heinemann, Department of French,
usability testing (1991-)
John C. Hurd, Faculty of Divinity, Trinity
College, Chair, Software Development
Committee (1986-89)
Ian Lancashire, Department of English, project
manager (mid-1992--), design (1990-), project
administration (IBM cooperative), consultant
and usability testing (1984-)
Willard McCarty, CCH, usability testing and
design (1991-)
Lidio Presutti, UTCC, designer-programmer
(1987-91)
Michael Stairs, CCH, designer-programmer (1991-92),
principal system designer-programmer (1993-)
T. R. Wooldridge, Department of French,
Chair, Software Development Committee
(1990-91), usability testing (1991-)
**************************************************************
* C. TACT DISTRIBUTION BY POST *
**************************************************************
TACT Distribution, Centre for Computing in the
Humanities, Robarts Library, Room 14297A, University of Toronto,
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A5, CANADA. Atn.: Elke Rudman.
**************************************************************
* D. GOPHER & ANONYMOUS FTP ACCESS TO TACT VERS. 2.1 *
**************************************************************
TACT 2.1 may be obtained by Gopher to
gopher.epas.utoronto.ca in the following subdirectory:
5. Centre for Computing in the Humanities
5. Software
1. Textual Analysis Computing Tools
2. TACT 2.1
You may also of course incorporate these TACT 2.1 files into
your own Gopher, but note that new versions will be released
through the CCH Gopher.
Use File Transfer Protocol (ftp) to login remotely on
epas.utoronto.ca (login as anonymous and use your Internet or
Bitnet address as password). Move into the /pub/cch/tact/tact
directory with the "cd" command. Make sure the file type is set to
"binary." Then "get" each of the TACT files. When you
download these files to your microcomputer, also be sure to set the
file type to "binary."
**************************************************************
* E. SPONSORS *
**************************************************************
IBM Canada through its former cooperative with the University
of Toronto (1986-89) provided the occasion for joint development of
TACT by members of the university's Computing Services,
John Bradley and Lidio Presutti, with the Centre for Computing in
the Humanities (CCH). In 1992 CCH assumed responsibility for
finishing version 2.1 and for future development of the system.
Five programs, Collgen, Preproc,
Makedct, Tagtext, and Satdct, were
developed with the help of a research grant to Ian Lancashire by
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
**************************************************************
* F. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS *
**************************************************************
The developers are indebted to John B. Smith's ARRAS
program and Susan Hockey's Oxford Concordance Program,
by which Usebase has in part been inspired. Brigham
Young University's WordCruncher has also influenced
Usebase in some aspects of design. Both TACTstat
and TACTfreq are derived from MTAS (Micro
Text-Analysis System) written by Lidio Presutti and Ian
Lancashire (vers. 1.0 [1985]; vers. 2.0 [1988]). Also see
section "V. NON-TACT FILES" below.
**************************************************************
* G. HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS *
**************************************************************
TACT requires a standard MS-DOS platform with 640K
RAM (preferably up to 16Mb additional memory); DOS 3.x or above; a
large hard disk (the uncompressed installed programs occupy about
3.2Mb); and a -386 or faster processor.
**************************************************************
* H. COPYRIGHT AND COPYING OF TACT *
**************************************************************
TACT is shareware. All programs are copyrighted to
the programmers and members of the development team and to the
University of Toronto but may be freely copied by anyone for
research or teaching as long as it is distributed only pursuant to
this license.
Permission is hereby granted to reproduce and disseminate the
TACT system so long as
1. no remuneration of any kind is received in exchange;
2. distribution is without any modification to the contents
of its files, including the copyright notice and this license;
and
3. its supporting documentation is not separated from the
programs and published in any form as a manual without written
permission in advance.
No copy of TACT may be distributed without including a
copy of this license.
Any other use is prohibited without express, written
permission in advance.
**************************************************************
* I. COST *
**************************************************************
CCH charges Cdn $30 (US $25) to mail a copy of TACT
on diskettes (7% GST should be added for purchases in Canadian
dollars). The program itself is free. The charge is for postage,
materials, and handling.
**************************************************************
* J. DOCUMENTATION *
**************************************************************
Online help exists for each of the programs. The developers
are glad to answer questions about the usage or design of TACT
and to receive suggestions for its improvement. Queries can be sent
directly to TACT-L@vm.utcs.utoronto.ca, the discussion group for
users of TACT. The manual, to be published by the Modern
Language Association of America, is being written by Bradley,
Lancashire, McCarty, Stairs, and Wooldridge. Exemplary texts are
being provided by a number of scholars.
**************************************************************
* K. VERSIONS *
**************************************************************
TACT 1.0 was first released at the first joint
conference of the Association for Computing in the Humanities and
the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing in Toronto in
June 1989. Version 1.2b was released in 1991. Several
experimental versions employing memory management have been
available by anonymous ftp since then. A special version, 2.0,
was done for the ADMYTE project and includes a version of
Makebase suitable for medieval Spanish, HSMS tags.
Version 2.1 beta, a major revision of the program and of its
interface, was released in June 1993 in Ottawa and Washington.
Version 2.1 gamma was released December 30, 1993, at the Modern
Language Association Convention in Toronto. The current version,
2.1.4 was uploaded to epas.utoronto.ca for distribution in June,
1995.
**************************************************************
* L. FILES IN CURRENT VERSION *
**************************************************************
(i) DISKETTE 1
INSTALL.EXE - TACT System installation program.
TACTPRGS.LZH - see below.
BUGS.TXT - a chronology of known bugs, and repair dates if fixed.
TACTPRGS.DTE - a listing of the contents of TACTPRGS.LZH for verification.
LHA.EXE - the archiving program used during the installation process.
TACTREAD.ME - this file.
Files in the archive: TACTPRGS.LZH
BUILDBAT.EXE
COLLGEN.EXE
MERGEBAS.EXE
DEFAULT.MKS
XLATTABL.DAT
EPSONFX.XDT
HPLASER.XDT
IBMGRAPH.XDT
SPRINT.XDT
WP42.XDT
TACTFREQ.EXE
TACTSTAT.EXE
USEBASE.EXE
MAKEBASE.EXE
DOUGMENU.EXE
TACT.BAT
TACT.MNU
TACT.ICO
ANAGRAMS.EXE
TACT.RES
FCOMPARE.EXE
(ii) DISKETTE 2
LHA212.EXE self-extracting archive program LHArc and
documentation.
TACTPRG2.LZH see below.
TACTPRG2.DTE a listing of the files in TACTPRG2.LZH for verification.
DMENU168.ZIP menuing program archive.
DM168SRC.ZIP source code for menuing program.
TEXTS.LZH see below.
TEXTS.DTE a listing of the files in TEXTS.LZH for verification.
Files in archive: TACTPRG2.LZH
MAKEDCT.EXE
TAGTEXT.EXE
SATDCT.EXE
PREPROC.EXE
TACTSORT.EXE
HSMS2TDB.EXE
DEFAULT.HMS
HSMS.XDT
Files in archive: TEXTS.LZH
MENWOMEN.QUE
VOLPONE.TDB
VOLPONE.MKS
VOLPONE.TXT
MAINENGL.DCT
MAINENGL.DOC
ENGLFUNC.XCL
**************************************************************
* M. INSTALLATION *
**************************************************************
To install TACT, do the following.
(i) Step 1.
If you are installing from a floppy drive, insert the
TACT program diskette #1 into the appropriate floppy
drive (A or B) and then change to the drive that holds this
diskette.
OR
if you are installing from a hard drive (as you will after
downloading TACT from your Internet or Bitnet directory),
change to the directory that holds the INSTALL.EXE and other
installation files.
(ii) Step 2.
From the DOS prompt, type:
INSTALL
and press .
(iii) Step 3.
An introductory screen now provides some basic information and asks
you to press any key to continue with the installation process.
(iv) Step 4.
You are next asked where you would like TACT installed.
If the install program finds an old version of TACT on
your hard drive, pointed to by a PATH or TACTPATH statement, you
will be asked if you want to replace the older version of the
programs. If yours is a first-time installation, the default
location, c:\tact, is suggested.
If this location is satisfactory, press Y.
If you would rather have another location to install TACT,
press N instead. Then you will now prompted to enter the path you
wish to use.
(v) Step 5.
The appropriate files are now copied to your hard drive, using the
path(s) specified. You are prompted to insert the second diskette,
when needed.
(vi) Step 6.
You are next asked which drive your computer boots from. Computers
normally boot from C unless they are network workstations with no
hard drives. Press C if your computer boots from the C: drive. If
you are sure from computer boots from A:, press A.
(vii) Step 7.
You are next asked if you want TACTPATH added to your AUTOEXEC.BAT,
or if it already exists there, if you want it updated to reflect
the path to the new version of TACT.
If this is a first-time installation, or you are unsure, press Y.
If you press N, please be sure to make the changes manually.
If there is no TACTPATH set in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, TACT
Shell will not work. A copy of your previous AUTOEXEC.BAT
file will be created with the ending .BAK.
(viii) Step 8.
You will next be asked whether you would like a SET TEMP command
placed in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. This SET variable is necessary
for TACT Shell to work. Answer Y if you are unsure.
(ix) Step 9.
You are next asked if you want to increase the environment space,
set in your CONFIG.SYS file. TACT Shell requires at least
1024 bytes (1K) to operate.
Press Y, unless you are sure there is enough space, or you are
going to make the changes manually. A copy of your previous
CONFIG.SYS file will be created with the ending .BAK.
Step 9 completes the installation procedure. If any changes have
been made to your AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS files, you should
reboot your computer before proceeding.
**************************************************************
* N. TACT AND DISPLAY SCREENS *
**************************************************************
TACT may not display text on the screen in colours that
are suitable for your screen. If this is a problem, you can set
the DOS environment variable TACTSCR to tell TACT what
colours to use.
To use this option, type one of the following commands at the DOS
prompt. Your choices are as follows.
SET TACTSCR=CO80
makes TACT use the setting suitable for colour screens.
SET TACTSCR=BW80
makes TACT use the setting suitable for black and white
screens connected to a CGA video card.
SET TACTSCR=MONOCHROME
makes TACT use the setting suitable for the standard
monochrome display screen.
SET TACTSCR=LCD
makes TACT use the setting suitable for many LCD screens
on portable/notebook computers.
**************************************************************
* O. SETTING TACTPATH *
**************************************************************
This is done automatically by the INSTALL program unless the user
chooses not to. For an explanation of what TACTPATH is, please read on.
TACT programs require various other files during
execution, such as XLATTABL.DAT and TACT.RES. Usually these reside
in the directory that TACT itself comes from, but
sometimes you will move them to another place. One way to ensure
that TACT will always find these files is to put them in
a directory listed in the DOS PATH. If TACT programs have
no other way to find the files they need, they will first look in
the current logged directory, and then in the various places
specified on the DOS PATH.
If you wish, however, you can specify a list of one or more
directories that TACT programs should search for files
they need.
Do so by setting the TACTPATH environment variable:
SET TACTPATH=c:\TACT
This DOS command names a directory "\TACT" on the "C" drive, and
stores that in the TACTPATH environment variable. This command
tells any TACT program to look for its files in "C:\TACT".
If the TACTPATH environment variable is specified, TACT
will not use the DOS PATH to look for files. Whether TACTPATH is
set or not, however, TACT will always look first in the
current directory.
**************************************************************
* P. USING TACT WITH WINDOWStm *
**************************************************************
TACT will work within Windowstm.
However, there is no mouse support for the program, so you will
have to continue to use the ordinary keystrokes to perform all
operations. You may wish to create a group for the TACT
programs. You can do so by clicking on the New option under the
File menu. Select the Program Group option and click on OK. The
cursor is now in the Description Box. Then type:
TACT System
and click on OK.
You can then create icons for the TACT Menu system and/or
the individual programs. For example, if you wish to create an
icon for the TACT Menu, click on the New option under the
File menu. Select the Program Item option and click on OK. In the
Description box, type
TACT Menu
and then press the Tab button, and for the Command Line enter the
appropriate path where you installed the TACT programs,
followed by the program name (e.g., C:\TACT\TACT.BAT). You may
optionally enter a path for the Working Directory, if you have a
directory where you store the majority of your .TDB files. Next,
click on Change Icon, click on OK, to ignore the message, and type
the following:
c:\tact\tact.ico
(substituting the correct path where the TACT system
exists, if it is different). You can follow the same procedure for
any of the other TACT programs if you wish, using the same
icon (TACT.ICO), or using one of the ones provided with the Program
Manager.
**************************************************************
* Q. USING TACT WITH A NETWORK *
**************************************************************
If you plan to store TACT in a shared drive on a network
there are several points to consider. Most TACT programs
require some disk area where they can store temporary files. This
means that the programs cannot be run from a read-only directory.
You can store the programs themselves in a read-only directory, but
the current/working directory has to be read/write. This usually
implies running the programs from a local drive, or a separate
directory on the fileserver for each concurrent use.
Usebase requires plenty of lower memory to run (i.e.,
memory below 640K). Network drivers can use some of this valuable
space. If the workstations are -386/-486 computers with more than
640K, then use a memory manager (e.g., DOS 6.0 Memmaker,
HIMEM.SYS, QEMM.SYS, etc.) to load the network drivers and any
other TSRs high, freeing as much lower memory as possible.
Note that the SET TEMP variable *must* point to a read/write
directory for TACT Shell to behave correctly.
**************************************************************
* R. EMS SUPPORT *
**************************************************************
Usebase and Collgen still use expanded memory
(EMS) if it is available. EMS can greatly speed up some
operations. Consult your DOS manual to find out how to access EMS.
You MUST have a expanded memory manager loaded, e.g. EMM386.EXE. If
you use EMM386.EXE, be sure that the word RAM rather than NOEMS follows
on the line in your CONFIG.SYS that loads it. If you use MEMMAKER to
configure your memory (DOS 6.0+), be sure to say yes, when asked if any
programs use EMS. The rest of the programs now use Extended memory if it is
available. Add the following line to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file,
TACTEMS=x
where x is the amount of space you wish to make available for
TACT. For example, 2048 would allocate up to 2MB of
expanded memory when needed. The maximum that TACT can
use is 4096 (4MB).
On rare occasions, this EMS support can cause Usebase or
Collgen to crash. If this happens to you, set TACTEMS=0,
to disable the use of EMS.
**************************************************************
* S. ENVIRONMENT SPACE *
**************************************************************
If you get an error message, stating that you have run out of
environment space, then increase the value for /E to 2048, or more.
**************************************************************
* T. .TDB FILES CREATED PRIOR TO VERSION 2.0 *
**************************************************************
Please note that any databases created prior to TACT 2.0
will have to be recompiled with the new Makebase.
**************************************************************
* U. CHANGES FROM VERSION 1.2 to VERSION 2.1 *
**************************************************************
Here is described briefly how TACT 2.1 differs from
earlier versions (especially 1.2). Apart from changes to the
interface (e.g., the menu system) and improved memory management,
there is a new database structure, as a result of which all
TACT textual databases prior to version 2.0 will need to
be recompiled.
(i) Changed Filenames
The following filenames have changed:
old name new name
-----------------------------
MAKBAS.EXE --> MAKEBASE.EXE
TACT.EXE --> USEBASE.EXE
(ii) New Programs and New Files
There are the following 11 new programs:
ANAGRAMS.EXE
FCOMPARE.EXE
MAKEDCT.EXE
PREPROC.EXE
SATDCT.EXE
TACT.BAT
TACTFREQ.EXE
TACTSORT.EXE
TACTSTAT.EXE
TAGTEXT.EXE
HSMS2TDB.EXE
To determine how to use these programs, consult the online help
in each. TACT.BAT is the main shell that allows access to all the
TACT programs, you must set TACTPATH for this program to
work correctly.
There are also a number of new files used by TACT.BAT; they are
necessary, and should not be deleted. The new files are:
TACT.MNU (menu script)
DOUGMENU.EXE (freeware menuing system)
TACT.ICO (TACT icon for Windows)
(iii) All Programs Except Usebase and Collgen
For the January 1994 gamma release, all programs except
Usebase and Collgen utilize DOS extended memory.
This will speed up some operations for computers with any extended
memory (memory above 1MB on most computers) and, we hope, eliminate
a number of bugs, memory limitations, and speed bottlenecks.
(iv) Makebase (Previously Makbas)
There are two new features.
A POS tag is defined inside the "Structural Info" Panel. The
POS (or "position") tag is for editorial information, such as line
numbers, which occurs in the same place within each line.
Makebase now allows lines longer than 74 characters to
"wrap" when they are subsequently displayed. The maximum allowable
length is 255 characters. A "Splitline" character is added at the
end of each line to indicate that it has been wrapped at that
point. To change the default splitline character (hexadecimal DE), edit
the /Splitline/ variable in XLATTABL.DAT, using hexadecimal
representation. To replace the splitline character with a blank,
for example, edit the appropriate line to read
/Splitline/ > /20/
(v) Mergebas
A number of bugs in the processing of large files have been fixed.
(vi) Anagrams
Anagrams is a new program that produces a list of partial
or complete anagrams for a given database.
(vii) TACTfreq
TACTfreq is a new program that produces a list of all
words that occur in a given database, with their frequency of
occurrence in one of three different orders (alphabetical,
reverse alphabetical, and descending frequency).
(viii) TACTstat
TACTstat is a new program that produces type-token
statistics for a given database.
(ix) Preproc
Preproc is a new program that produces a set of output
files relating to an input source text. The first output file is
a list of distinct words. The second file is a copy of the input
file with all tags, non-retained diacritics, and continuation
characters removed. The third output file is a listing of all
lines with tags and continuation characters in them. At the end of
this file is an alphabetical listing of all reference tags found in
the text.
(x) Makedct
Makedct is a new program that is used to build
dictionaries. The input file is a list of distinct words produced
by Preproc. This list is compared to two optional
existing dictionaries, to produce a dictionary for the given input
file. This dictionary contains surface, lemmatized, and two other
forms for each word as well as part-of-speech information.
(xi) Tagtext
Tagtext is a new program that supplements or replaces the
word-forms in a text with the fields from that text's dictionary or
".DCT" file, which Makedct previously generated for you.
It can add up to two tags for each word in the text.
(xii) Satdct
Satdct is a new program that will generate a satellite
dictionary for a given tagged text. The dictionary will consist of
an alphabetical list of distinct forms, in user-selectable order,
along with the number of occurrences of each distinct form.
(xiii) Fcompare
Fcompare is a new program that compares two ASCII files,
separating similar and dissimilar lines or fields. The user may
choose to compare whole lines, or a particular tab delimited field
within the input lines.
(xiv) Buildbat
Buildbat now uses the familiar panel interface. You may
specify whether to use DEFAULT.MKS or any another .MKS file. The
name of the batch file created by Buildbat is the same as
the input .LST file but with a .BAT suffix; thus VOLPONE.LST causes
Buildbat to generate VOLPONE.BAT. You can include paths
in the file-names.
(xv) Collgen
Collgen has been substantially altered. It now allows the
user optionally to produce a list of all repeating phrases and
subphrases, or only the maximally occurring phrases. That is, if
a subphrase occurs the same number of times as a larger phrase that
contains it, the subphase will not be included in the list of
repeating phrases. This eliminates much redundancy in the output.
Collgen also can produce a list of pairs of words that
co-occur within a user-specified word span, in any order. A
numerical value is associated with each pair signifying the
statistical likelihood of the words co-occurring in such a fashion.
The size of the co-occurrence output file can be reduced by use of
one of two optional input files. The user can supply an .INC
(include) or .XCL (exclude) file, consisting of a list of words to
be included/excluded from the output of pairs of words
co-occurring. For example, one could use this feature, by
providing an .XCL file consisting of prepositions and other
function words. The output would exclude any pair consisting of
one or two function words. Output can be produced with spaces or
tab-delimited.
(xvi) HSMS2TDB
HSM2TDB is a new program that produces a textual database
for Usebase from a input source text that has been marked up
using the tagging scheme for the Hispanic Seminary of Medieval
Studies (HSMS).
(xvii) Usebase
The program formerly called TACT has been renamed
Usebase. The interface has been simplified in a number of
areas, and new features have been added. The menu bar now has the
following items: File, Select, Displays, Group, and Help. Current
and New have now been merged into Displays. Exit is now within the
File menu. Category is now called "Group." Some items within the
various menus have also moved to other menus.
* The following functions now fall under the File menu:
- TextBase Profile (Shift-F1): a new item. When selected, it
provides the user with information about the current database: the
number of distinct words; the total number of words; the title and
path of the database selected; the name of the optional "group
index file" (.GIX, formerly, "personal database"); and a copy of
the original .MKS file used to create to database.
- Import (Shift-F2): import query.
- Multiple Import (Alt-F2): a new item that allows the user to
import multiple queries as groups.
- Export(Ctrl-F2): export query (formerly "rule").
- Disk (F9): Print to disk.
- Print (Shift-F9): send to printer.
- Record (Shift-F10): record to script.
- PlayBack (Ctrl-F10): play back a script.
- Exit (F10): conditional exit from the program.
* The following functions now fall under the Select menu:
- Complete Word-list (F3).
- Selected Word-list (F4).
- Groups (F5) (formerly "categories")
- Query (F2) (formerly "rule")
* The following functions now fall under the Display menu:
- KWIC (Shift-F3) (formerly "Index Display").
- Variable Context (Shift-F4) (formerly "KWIC").
- Text (Shift-F5): unchanged.
- Distribution (Shift-F6): unchanged.
- Collocate (Shift-F7): unchanged.
- Modify (F6): unchanged.
- Cycle Displays (F7): formerly "Next."
- Window Displays (Shift-F8): formerly "Panel."
- Synchronize Displays (F8): formerly "Synchronize."
- Zoom (Ctrl-F9): unchanged.
- Close Display (Ctrl-F9): formerly F9.
* The following functions now fall under the Group menu:
- Make (Ctrl-F3): formerly "Create."
- Delete (Ctrl-F4): unchanged.
- Replace (Ctrl-F5): unchanged.
- Group-list (Ctrl-F6): formerly "View List."
- Selected Group (Ctrl-F7): formerly "View a Category."
* The following functions now fall under the Help menu:
- Help (F1): formerly "Help" on the menu bar.
- Help Template (Alt-F1): a new item. When selected, it provides
the user with an on-screen keyboard template, listing all
function-key shortcuts.
- Credits (Ctrl-F1): a new item. When selected, provides the user
with a on-screen list of Usebase development credits.
* The following are changes to selection and displays in
Usebase.
- Change to Word-list Selection. You can now find a word in the
word-list by spelling the word in sequential order.
Usebase will move through the list as you type each
letter. If you make a spelling mistake or wish to backup for some
reason, press the Backspace key. If you wish to start over again
hit the Up or Down-arrow keys to reset.
- The PgUp and PgDn keys in displays now move you up or down one
screen at a time rather than by selected items. If you wish to
move up or down by items, use Alt-PgUp or Alt-PgDn.
- If you select $word in Display Options, the actual word rather
than word number can be provided as the reference. This is
especially useful in the Distribution and Collocates Displays when
you have selected more than one word.
- In the KWIC display (previously "Index"), (1) you may now
optionally choose not to display the line-break character "|"
(this can sometimes mean more context is provided around the
keyword) and (2) you can choose to indicate the keyword by
highlighting it or preceding it with a ">".
**************************************************************
* V. NON-TACT FILES *
**************************************************************
There are four archives that are included in the distribution, as
a condition for our using DOUGMENU.EXE and LHA. These are found on
the second distribution disk, but are NOT copied to your hard drive
during the installation. These archives are:
DMENU168.ZIP (freeware archive of menuing system)
DM168SRC.ZIP (freeware archive of menuing source)
LHA212.EXE (freeware self-extracting archive of
archive software)
**************************************************************
* W. BUG REPORTS *
**************************************************************
BUGS.TXT is a file containing a listing of currently known bugs,
their symptoms and, if existing, work-arounds. This file will be
regularly updated and made available to TACT-L and within the
anonymous ftp directory for TACT.
Please report any problems to the TACT development group via e-mail:
TACT@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA
Questions of usability and applications should be directed to TACT-L.
Please do not send questions or comments directly to John Bradley
Lidio Presutti, or Michael Stairs but pass them on to them via TACT
or TACT-L.
Send all other enquiries to
Prof. Ian Lancashire
TACT Development
Centre for Computing in the Humanities
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ont. M5S 1A1
CANADA
**************************************************************
* X. FUTURE UPGRADES FOR TACT *
**************************************************************
These will be announced in TACT-L and in the Gopher and
anonymous ftp directory for TACT distribution (see above
section D).
**************************************************************
* Y. INFORMATION ABOUT TACT APPLICATIONS *
**************************************************************
The Centre for Computing in the Humanities publishes
occasional volumes of papers on TACT applications.
Individual researchers also publish papers independently. Here is
a list of some of these known to us.
Arthur, Karen (1993). "A TACT Analysis of the
Language of Death in Troilus and Criseyde." In Ian
Lancashire, ed. Computer-Based Chaucer Studies. CCHWP 3.
Toronto: CCH. 67-85.
Bradley, John (1991). "TACT Design." In T. R.
Wooldridge, ed. A TACT Exemplar. CCH Working
Papers 1. Toronto: Centre for Computing in the Humanities. 7-14.
Broderick, Catherine (1992). "TACTfully Byting the Bard: A
Computer-Assisted Text-Retrieval-Based Approach to Henry V."
Kobe College Studies 38.3 (March): 55-67.
Doutrelepont, Charles (1992). "Quelques logiciels utiles aux
traducteurs ou aux terminologues. Les hypertextes et l'analyse des
contextes." In Andre' Clas and Hayssam Safar, eds.
L'environnement Traductionnel: La station de travail du
traducteur de l'an 2001. Journe'es scientifiques du Re'seau
the'matique de recherche "Lexicologie, terminologie, traduction"
Mons 25-27 avril 1991. Sillery, Que'bec: Presses de
l'Universite' du Que'bec and AUPELF-UREF.
Dumont, Stephen D. (1992). `"Me'thodologies Informatiques
et Nouveaux Horizons dans les Recherches Me'di'evales." In
Rencontres de Philosophie Me'die'vale. Brepols: Socie'te'
Internationale pour l'E'tude de la Philosophie Me'die'vale. 77-109.
Lancashire, Ian (1993). "Chaucer's Phrasal Repetends and The
Manciple's Prologue and Tale." In Ian Lancashire, ed.
Computer-Based Chaucer Studies. CCHWP 3. Toronto: CCH.
99-122.
-- (1993). "Chaucer's Repetends from The General Prologue of
The Canterbury Tales." In R. A. Taylor, J. F. Burke, P.
J. Eberle, and B. S. Merrilees, eds. The Centre and its
Compass: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Professor John
Leyerle. Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University. 315-65.
-- (1993). "Computer-assisted Critical Analysis: A Case Study
of Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale." In Landow, George
P., and Paul Delany, eds. The Digital Word: Text-based
Computing in the Humanities. Cambridge, Mass., and London:
The MIT Press. 293-318.
McCarty, Willard (1993). "Das Texterschliessungssystem TACT."
In Winfried Lenders, ed. Computereinsatz in der Angewandten
Linguistik. Forum Angewandte Linguistik Band 25. Frankfurt
am Main: Peter Lang. 105-10.
-- (1991). "Finding Implicit Patterns in Ovid's
Metamorphoses with TACT." In T. R. Wooldridge,
ed. A TACT Exemplar. CCH Working Papers 1. Toronto:
Centre for Computing in the Humanities. 37-95.
Schutt, Russell K. (1992). TACT. [Software review.]
Social Science Computer Review 10.2 (Summer): 280-2.
Steele, Kenneth B. (1991). "`The Whole Wealth of thy Wit in
an Instant': TACT and the Explicit Structures of
Shakespeare's Plays." In T. R. Wooldridge, ed. A TACT
Exemplar. CCH Working Papers 1. Toronto: Centre for Computing
in the Humanities. 15-35.
Wooldridge, T. Russon (1991). "A CALL Application in
Vocabulary and Grammar." In T. R. Wooldridge, ed. A TACT
Exemplar. CCH Working Papers 1. Toronto: Centre for Computing
in the Humanities. 77-86.
**************************************************************
* Z. RESPONSIBILITY STATEMENT *
**************************************************************
The University of Toronto and the members of the TACT
development group cannot be held financially responsible for
problems that arise from the use of the TACT system.
Ian Lancashire Michael Stairs
Professor of English Chief Programmer
University of Toronto University of Toronto
ian@epas.utoronto.ca stairs@epas.utoronto.ca
6 June 1995