Languages

Kriton Kyrimis kyrimis at cti.gr
Tue Jan 22 14:03:07 CET 2002


SPREA:

> It seemed to me that there ain't no such think as a Greek willing to index,
> maybe you've all got an anti-index gene, I don't know :-)

Well, it's been at least 41 years since I last curled up with a nice
index, while it's only been a few hours since I last did that with a
comic book!

> Hello, I'm a program :-)

 From what you describe below, it would appear that it was, indeed,
a program that converted the "x" that you typed into a ksi.

> But who's gonna do this? You? You'd be definitely welcome  :-)

In my last message I suggested that it should be some young enthusiastic
Greek who should do this. I don't know about the enthusiastic or the
Greek bits, but I'm definitely not in my first youth any more. :(

> I actually have no idea if the input files can be handled directly with
> Greek letters or not.

A few years ago, when I discussed this with Harry, it was my impression
that they can't, or at least that they shouldn't...

> KX   61b    I TL  243-A   35 3      RSc RSc     US  To teleytaio mpalampoy
> [xapp:US,BRI(1st),DD,HDL] [code:K.121]
...
> As you can see, titles like "To teleytaio mpalampoy" become real Greek only
> on the output files, I never types any Greek letters.

...and coupled with the above example, which doesn't seem to contain any
indication that the text is in Greek, other than the name of the magazine
(KX), suggests that the conversion into Greek is an all or nothing,
10 ksi 10, automated approach.

> > In any case, I don't know how useful a Greek index in its present
> > form would be to a non-Greek. Speaking for myself as a Greek, however,
> > I don't think I could use it.
>
> I still can't see why. It's only titles after all that are in Greek, and
> titles are definitely not the most important part of an index.

This is a rather surprising statement. I guess it depends on the things
for which one uses an index. Not being much of an indexing enthusiast,
as you may have gathered, the few INDUCKS searches that I've done always
involved the story of a title. As to why I find the current state of
the Greek titles unusable, perhaps you should put yourself in my place,
imagining all Italian titles horribly misspelled and with all accents
removed. Looking at the titles is, at best, a cause for laughter or,
at worst, a cause for despair. :(

	Kriton	(e-mail: kyrimis at cti.gr)
	      	(WWW:    http://dias.cti.gr/~kyrimis)
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"One always has choices.  Whether one chooses to see them or not is,
 in itself, its own choice."
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