IRList Digest Monday, 25 January 1988 Volume 4 : Issue 2 Today's Topics: Interest - User-oriented and/or adaptible retrieval techniques Query - Machine readable dictionary for French - Stories on machine readable dictionaries Reply - Articles on Responsa Project Discussion - Pointer on S. Weiss and on IR relating to chemistry Announcement - Microsoft CD-ROM Conference and SIGIR session - Thesis defense on CODER system - TINLAP3 Position Papers available from ACL - TEXAS indexer/browser/database Hypercard stack news News addresses are Internet or CSNET: fox@vtopus.cs.vt.edu BITNET: foxea@vtvax3.bitnet ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ralf Cordes Date: Mon, 18 Jan 88 15:08:25 -0100 Subject: interest in user-oriented and/or adaptible retrieval techniques DATE : 18. Jan. 1988 NAME : Ralf Cordes , cordes@infbs.uucp, cordes@DBSINF6.BITNET TOPIC: user-oriented and/or adaptible retrieval techniques I work in the field of "user-oriented" and "adaptible" retrieval techniques including machine learning approaches such as mentionend in Wong/Ziarko "A machine learning approach to IR" (Proc. SIGIR R&D in IR Conf., Pisa 86). So I'm in search for papers which were focussed on the problem mentioned above. Thanks in advance Ralf Cordes ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Jan 88 14:14:33 GMT From: steinmetz!uunet!mcvax!cnetlu!gilloux (Gilloux) Subject: Seeking machine readable dictionaries for the french language I am in search of machine readable dictionaries in French. The intended use is to extract automatically semantic information needed in a NL parser. Any help would be appreciated on that topic. Michel Gilloux Centre National d'Etudes des Telecommunications LAA/SLC/AIA Route de Tregastel, BP 40 22301 Lannion CEDEX FRANCE UUCP: mcvax!inria!cnetlu!gilloux ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 22 Jan 88 17:06 EDT From: krovetz@UMass.bitnet Subject: dictionary stories Ed, Robert France posted a msg to the net that mentioned you had some stories to tell about your experience with machine readable dictionaries. Well, I'd be interested to hear them! We recently got a copy of the Longman dictionary. It took me almost two years to get it. I've had a few hassles with it, but nothing major (I had to convert from the cambridge lisp escape character to that of common lisp, and I found a message in the middle of the file that said "processing priority changed from 1.39 to 1.45"). Bran Boguraev took care of the worst of it by converting the typesetting tape to a sequence of s-expressions. So, what kind of war stories do you have to tell? -bob [Note: there has been discussion in AIList, which I won't duplicate, that led to the above msg. I believe Robert will put together a reply to several inquiries and send it in to IRList - Ed] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Jan 88 18:13:36 est From: batesdl@gecrdvm1.bitnet (David Bates) Subject: Query by Abigail Ann Young Ed: I sent the following E-Mail in response to a request from Abigail Ann Young in a recent IR-List. If you think there would be more general interest, feel free to reprint part or all of it. Dr. Young: I read your inquiry in the IR-List. As it happens, there was a passing reference in the List a couple months back to something called the Responsa project, which aroused my curiosity. Responsa is apparently a full-text system storing (I suspect in Hebrew) (Jewish)Talmudic Responsas. I was curious enough to do a quick search of two or three bibliographic databases (although not curious enough to get copies of the articles. Several citations follow: Choueka, Y. Computerized full-text retrieval systems & research in the humanities: the Responsa project. Comput. & Hum., v.14, no.3, Nov. 1980 . pp. 153-169. Borko, H. The Responsa project: a full text retrieval system for Hebrew case law. ASIS '85 (Proceedings of the 48th ASIS Annual Mtg.) pp. 367-8. (Additionally there was a citation to a group called the Institute for Computers in Jewish Life (in Chicago) which has mounted for the use of scholars, etc. a copy of the Responsa data base. This was mentioned in Softalk, vol.3, no.6, Feb. 1983, p. 229). Finally, a comparison of Responsa and some other info-retrieval systems can be found in: Silberglad, I. Full test information retrieval software... Online Review, v.11, no.2, April 1987, pp. 107-117. I don't know if any of this helps you at all, but here it is. I have not seen any of these articles, so I can't vouch for much about it. Sincerely, David Bates Whitney Library G.E. R&D Center Schenectady NY (518) 387-7538 (E-mail: via bitnet on node gecrdvm1 , username BATESDL ) [Note: Yaacov Choueka might want to comment more. I have found the Responsa Project to be an important effort well worth following. - Ed] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Jan 88 19:25 EDT From: LEWIS@UMass.bitnet Subject: query on Weiss dissertation, chemistry & IR refs Dear Dr. Fox: In your addendum to my November query to IRLIST re determining relevance by matching non-surface text representations you mentioned a dissertation by a "S. Weiss" as worth looking at. I haven't run into this name anywhere since, so I was wondering if you could give me a pointer to where to find out more--do you know their school. I'd also be interested to hear any specific references you suggest on IR for chemistry, which you also mentioned. Many thanks, David D. Lewis CSNET: lewis@cs.umass.edu COINS Dept. BITNET: lewis@umass University of Massachusetts, Amherst Amherst, MA 01003 [Note: I was referring to dissertation of Stephen F. Weiss, who is at UNC Chappel Hill. I read his dissertation about 9 years ago in the library at Cornell - don't know how easy it is to get access to a copy. He is on the net and might be able to give pointers. Regarding IR and chemistry, I suggest you look into the recent CACM article on ARIADNE - others may have suggestions to share too. - Ed] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 23 Jan 88 11:18:07 est From: vtvax3::foxea Subject: Microsoft CD-ROM Conf. and SIGIR session (comments welcome!) The 3rd International Conference on CD-ROM will be sponsored by Microsoft and will be held March 1-3, 1988 in Seattle. On Thursday March 3 there will be 1 1/2 hours for SIGs to meet. ACM SIGIR will be given a room and there should be interesting discussions. I am in the process of drawing up plans for the session, and so welcome any comments or volunteers to help - we should make it serve SIGIR as best as possible. I look forward to seeing some of you there, Ed Note that you can obtain more details about the conference by calling (206) 867-3341 or (206) 882-8080 x7213 or writing to Microsoft Corp., Sherrie Eastman, Dept. CDR1, Box 97017, Redmond WA 98073-9717 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Jan 88 10:23:43 est From: fox (Ed Fox) Subject: demonstration and MS thesis defense What: M.S. Thesis Defense Who: Marybeth T. Weaver Moderator: Edward A. Fox Date: January 29, 1988 Time: 9:00 a.m. [Note: vtopus is reserved then for demo!] Place: Virginia Tech, 558 McBryde Hall Title: Implementing an Intelligent Information Retrieval System The CODER System, Version 1.0 Abstract: For individuals requiring interactive access to online text, information storage and retrieval systems provide a way to retrieve desired documents and/or text passages. The CODER (COmposite Document Expert/effective/extended Retrieval) system is a testbed for determining how useful various artificial intelligence techniques are in increasing the effectiveness of information storage and retrieval systems. The system, designed previously, has three components: an analysis subsystem for analyzing and storing document contents, a central spine for manipulation and storage of world and domain knowledge, and a retrieval subsystem for matching user queries to relevant documents. This thesis discusses the implementation of the retrieval subsystem and portions of the spine and analysis subsystem. It illustrates that logic programming, specifically the Prolog language, is suitable for development of an intelligent information retrieval system. Furthermore, it shows that system modularity provides a flexible research testbed: many individuals may work on different parts of the system which can later be quickly integrated. The retrieval subsystem has been implemented in a modular fashion so that new approaches to information retrieval can be easily compared to more traditional ones. A powerful knowledge representation language, a comprehensive lexicon and individually tailored experts using standardized blackboard modules for communication and control allowed rapid prototyping, incremental development and ready adaptability to change. The system executes on a DEC VAX 11/785 running ULTRIX, a variant of 4.2 BSD UNIX. It has been implemented as a set of MU-Prolog and C modules communicating through TCP/IP sockets. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Jan 88 20:49:02 est From: Don Walker Subject: TINLAP3 Position Papers available from ACL TINLAP-3 POSITION PAPERS AVAILABLE FROM ACL The Association for Computational Linguistics has just published the Position Papers prepared for TINLAP-3, the Third Conference on Theoretical Issues in Natural Language Processing. TINLAP-3 was organized by Yorick Wilks and held at New Mexico State University, 7-9 January 1987. There were sessions on "Words and World Representations," "Unification and the New Grammatism," "Connectionist and Other Parallel Approaches to Natural Language Processing," "Discourse Theory and Speech Acts," "Why Has Theoretical NLP Made so Little Progress?," "Formal Versus Common Sense Semantics," "Reference: The Interaction of Language and the World," "Metaphor," "Natural Language Generation." Many of the papers in this proceedings were revised by their authors following the meeting, so it is different from the one distributed there. The price is $20 for ACL personal and student members, $30 for individual nonmembers, and $40 for institutions. Copies are available from the ACL Office: D.E. Walker (ACL), Bell Communications Research, 435 South Street - MRE 2A379, Morristown, NJ 07960-1961, USA. ------------------------------ Date: 3 Jan 88 17:54 EST From: Mark Zimmermann Subject: TEXAS indexer/browser/database Hypercard stack news I found your various net addresses in an old file of folks who, somehow or other, expressed interest in my indexing/browsing/database software (or who were subjected to my ravings on that subject). Well, my sabbatical time is over, and I've got a nifty HyperCard stack for the Apple Macintosh that incorporates in a friendly fashion much of what I've accomplished in the area of free-text database tools. If you're interested in the stack (HyperCard program), and can make use of a Binhex'd Stuffit format file (compressed hex dump of a compressed Macintosh file), drop me a note on the net here and I'll be happy to zap it to you ... it is about 67kB long. I've posted copies to Info-Mac and to HyperHackers on arpanet, and it should be available in their archives and at Simtel20.arpa for anonymous ftp capture. If you want to get a copy for the Mac and the above paragraph makes no sense to you, drop me a disk, a self-addressed stamped envelope, and a few dollars for me to give to my son (who does the disk duplicating), and I'll send you the stack and all the Lightspeed C source code for the 13 external Hypercard functions which are included (compiled) in the stack. Here is the msg announcing the program which I sent off to various folks; it explains what the program is all about.... ^z ------------ I've just uploaded TEXAS01.SIT - HyperCard stack which lets you browse through multi-megabyte collections of free-text information. TEXAS includes facilities for building and sorting a complete inverted index to every word in a 'dataspace' text file. Very friendly and easy to use! To browse and retrieve information, begin with the index display, a scrolling list of key words, e.g.: 3 HYPERBOLIC 28 HYPERBUG 2 HYPERBUTTONS 10 HYPERC 2545 HYPERCARD ...etc. -- whatever words are in your input file. If you're interested in hypercard, just click on that word in the index and get a key word in context display (a scrolling window), e.g.: ay with these new tools. HyperCard, I believe, will be even better he pyramid is an index in HyperCard which knows something about the Bill Atkinson talks about HyperCard ----------------------------- y seeing products such as HyperCard, and we are too, as soon-to-be ...etc. -- a line of the actual text around every occurrence of your chosen word, centered on that word. If you want to read what Bill had to say, just click on that line in the context display, and get the full text in a scrolling window on your dataspace. This upload is version 0.1 -- it works great, but many features remain on my list to be added. It uses 13 XFCNs (written in Lightspeed C) to open, index, browse, etc. through files. Everything is included in the stack -- extensive help, documentation of all features, etc. TEXAS builds indices at a rate of over 3 MB/hour on my Mac Plus; browsing speeds are limited by HyperCard response times to a screenful/second or so. If you like TEXAS 0.1, send me encouraging words, ideas, or other contributions to keep me going further on it! (And contact me if you want copies of all the source code for my XFCNs, at nominal cost.) TEXAS has evolved out of my earlier Indexer/Browser programs during the past year. I use it to think with and to remember items from the Mac Tech Notes, from various online discussion groups, etc. The more info you put into it, the better it gets (until you run out of disk space)! -------------- Mark^Zimmermann science@nems.arpa [75066,20444] CompuServe 9511 Gwyndale Dr. Silver Spring, MD 20910 301-565-2166 USA ------------------------------ END OF IRList Digest ********************