Installing EmacsW32 on Windows 7

The Emacs installation documentation at http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/doc/builder/emacs/ now includes instructions for installing EmacsW32 on Windows 7 (shown in bold). Do let us know if there are any leftover problems with it.

ATF on Emacs

(For editors and project managers)

We still need to do a little work on updating Emacs ATF mode for Oracc 2. Until that happens, here is a list of what is and isn't working, and how to work around the latter.

ATF menu

Available when you have a .atf file open.

Check ATF

Lemmatise Buffer

Create Template

ATF Mode help

All working as usual.

Harvest Notices

Count Lemmata

Not working at the moment but neither is essential to the editing process.

Browse ATF docs

Links to a dead page. Go to the Builder Pages instead.

CBD menu

Corpus-based dictionary menu for project managers; vailable when you have a .glo file open.

Check CBD

Lemmer Update

Rebuild

Not working at the moment; you should manage glossaries through Unix instead

Project Maintenance Mode

CBD Mode help

Working as usual

Browse CBD docs

Links to a dead page. Go to the Manager Pages instead.

ORACC menu

For project managers; accessible from the Project Maintenance Mode item on the CBD menu.

Check Project

Merge Glossaries

Not working at the moment; you should manage projects through Unix instead—and note that the merge command now needs to specify the language

Harvest Glossary

Working as usual

Rebuild Project

Working but no longer recommended; use ncr or nor in Unix instead

Please do let me know if you have any problems or questions.

Adding Full Text Search to your Oracc 2 project portal

(FOR ORACC PROJECT MANAGERS)

One of Oracc 2's new functionalities is the Full Text Search across the whole of the site. There is a new documentation page about how to use it.

It is also very easy to enable users to do Full Text Search on your project alone, from one or more portal pages of your project. To do so you will need to edit them with Emacs or an XHTML editor.

• First add this line of code somewhere within the head element of the page, ideally with the other link elements:

  <link rel="stylesheet" type="/css/oraccbase.css"/>

  EDIT: This is now built into the main Oracc stylesheet.

• Then add this code wherever you want it to appear in the body of your web page, replacing [PROJECT] with the name of your project:

  <span class="find-button"><a href="/[PROJECT]/find">Full 
  Text Search</a></span>

  For instance, you might add a link to the online help:

  <p>Do a <span class="find-button"><a href="/cams/find">Full 
  Text Search</a></span> in CAMS 
  <a href="/doc/user/fulltextsearch/">[HELP]</a>.</p>

  EDITED TO ADD:

  If you are working with ESP, use <esp:link url="/[PROJECT]/find">...</esp:link> instead of <a href="/[PROJECT]/find">...</a>. The necessary CSS code is already built into ESP's stylesheet.

  This is displayed in the browser as:

  Do a Full Text Search in CAMS [HELP].

• Finally, don't forget to run oracc web to make it go live online.

Note that this does not replace the existing text, catalogue and glossary search functions, but allows users to search across the whole of your project, including portal pages. That does mean though that it is not very sensitive to the type of data it is searching, and returns rather rough and ready results. In particular, at the moment it privileges glossary entries but Steve is improving the way it returns results all the time.

As always, please let me know if you need assistance.

New project passwords

If you are the manager of a project, please contact your liaison to obtain a new Oracc password. You will not be able to log into your Oracc project without it. There is no hurry to do this: please wait until you need to use your project account again.

Choosing a password

Your liaison will help you choose a strong password. It must be:

• at least eight characters long
• composed of a mix of upper and lower-case letters and/or digits and/or punctuation (i.e., at least 3 of these 4)

When you have agreed on a suitable password, your liaison will set it for you.

Logging in again

Even if you and your project editors normally access your Oracc project using Emacs or Aquamacs, the first time that each of you logs in after the password change you must use Terminal or PuTTy in order to initialise the secure connection. Instructions are on the Project Management through Emacs page.

In addition, depending on your computer's security systems, Terminal or PuTTy may tell you to delete your known_hosts file, and will tell you where to find it. To delete this file it is easiest to use Emacs: type ctrl-x ctrl-f and enter the filename (on Macs it is ~/.ssh/known_hosts). Simply delete the contents of the file, save and close it. Then go back to Terminal/PuTTy and try the log-in again.

If you have any problems or questions with the initial log-in, please contact your liaison.

Piwik

Piwik log-in isn't yet functional but will be soon. More to follow...

Documentation updates

We've added a few useful odds and ends to the Oracc documentation over the past few months, which I thought it would be useful to summarise here:

• How to report a new sign value to Niek when the ATF checker complains of an unknown value;
• How to search the Qcat (catalogue of compositions) and request new entries;
• A list of Akkadian roots;
• How to add linguistic annotations to project glossaries;
• Fuller information about discourse divisions;
• And several new options for the oracc command.

As always, just ask if you have any questions or problems - or any suggestions for correcting, improving or adding to the documentation.

NEW: portal site software

Would you like to build a portal website for your Oracc project along the lines of Knowledge and Power or Assyrian Empire Builders? Now you can!

Just this week we have finished testing and documenting ESP, an Oracc version of the electrostatic programme written by George McKerron for the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in Cambridge. In order to use it, you will need to know the basics of (X)HTML and how to use Emacs (but most of us use Emacs for Oracc text editing anyway).

Instructions for use are on the Oracc website. The range of options for Oracc portal sites (including but not only ESP) is here.

As always, if you would like any advice or help, just ask me.

new Aquamacs

If you use Aquamacs (Emacs for Mac) to edit files on the Oracc server, you'll be delighted to know that the new release of Aquamacs does not require the endless retyping of passwords that the older versions do. I've been using Aquamacs 2.3 for several days now and strongly recommend it.

To install it, just open your current version of Aquamacs, choose "Check for updates..." on the Aquamacs menu, and follow the instructions you are given. Alternatively, you can go to http://aquamacs.org/download.shtml and download it from there.

If you have any problems with this, as always, let me know.


e

Directory names have changed!

If you are struggling to do project management through emacs, it may be because you are still using the old (CDL) directory names. For instance:

• old sources/ is now 00atf/
• old lib/ is now 00lib/
• old cat/ is now 00cat/
• old websources/ is now 00web/
• old backups/ is now 00bak/
  

See Project Management through Emacs for step-by-step instructions and Project Files for a more systematic overview.

As always, do ask for help if you need it, but I may not be as speedily responsive as usual over the next few days (up to and including Wednesday), as I'll be doing tablet work in Berlin. I will have broadband access in the hotel though, so I'll be checking in at least twice a day.

Logging in into Oracc for the first time

If you're trying and failing to login to your Oracc project for the first time since the move, the problem might have one or more of the following causes:

1. All project passwords were reset to the default on the move. Try logging in with the default (if you don't know what I mean, please email me) and then change your password to something more secure, by typing passwd at the prompt and then following the instructions. Your new password should mix uppercase and lowercase letters, and use non-letter characters too.
2. If you are running Win32Emacs, you need to trash your old atf-mode files before you install the new ones: see here.
3. Before you can use Emacs for project work, you will need to initialise the secure connection by following the instructions here.

If these three solutions fail, email me. (Steve is away until August now.)