Subject: Re: transcription editor Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 10:40:11 EST From: chandhok@GNOME.CS.CMU.EDU George Wittenberg asks about an editor for handling "overlapping dialogs" in a tabular format. Our collaborative writing environment, the PREP Editor, handles transcription *extremely* well - to the point of being able to include the actual voice in the document (if you have a enough RAM)! We use PREP to transcribe our own studies, in addition to writing all our papers. This transciption capability is ancillary to PREP's real goal, which is to provide a writing environment to support collaborative writing. We are an NSF sponsored project. PREP includes XTND capabilities for import and export; text, drawing, and sound support; and much more. Note that PREP is *NOT* a synchronous/networked/real time environment (although that will be changing). We think that 90% of the work happens asynchronously, anyway. What follows is the announcement I have posted to comp.groupware previously, and it describes how to get the PREP Editor via anonymous ftp. The PREP Editor is free, but we retain the copyright. All Rights Reserved, as they say. -Rob Chandhok prep-project@andrew.cmu.edu [editor: you can extract the rest of the message into a separate file at your discretion] ********************************************************************** In honour of Groundhog Day , I am pleased to announce the release of version 1.0a9 of the PREP Editor. The instructions for anonymous ftp follow. Most notable in the new release: * Support for "anchors", so that you can attach annotations at a finer grains size than the paragraph. In text views, this means you can attach to any run of characters, and in the drawing editor you can annotate any drawing object. * Better and faster file loading and printing - both have had _major_ speedups since the last release. * lots of other bug fixes and interface cleanups. You want version 1.0a9, which is stored in prepva9.sea.hqx Enjoy! Rob * File /usr/chandhok/public/prep/readme ************************************ This is an archive of the PREP Editor, a collaborative writing environment. PREP is a Macintosh application, compatible with System 6.0 and higher, including System 7. The PREP project is funded by the National Science Foundation and Apple Computer (ATG/ER). Our goal is to develop a system that encourages and facilitates collaboration in writing, without imposing requirements on connectivity and concurrency. Therefore, PREP requires no central server, and is not a synchronous "shared-screen" word processor. PREP provides a column based interface where related information is linked across columns. To some degree, PREP provides an unlimited amount of "virtual margins" to take notes in. The latest versions of PREP use the Claris XTND technology (provided) to make it easy to import documents for annotation in PREP (and export them afterwards with the annoations stored as footnotes). PREP is available via anonymous ftp on the internet (those instructions follow). If you cannot use ftp, please send mail to and we will forward instructions on how you can get a physical copy in the mail (for a small fee to cover our expenses). Please try PREP, and let us know what you think! * Anonymous ftp instructions *********************************************** The archives are stored as a "binhex'd self-extracting archive". It is available for anonymous ftp via gnome.cs.cmu.edu, and the EXACT instructions for getting the release package follows: 1) open an anonymous ftp connection to gnome.cs.cmu.edu (128.2.254.185) That is, do a "ftp gnome.cs.cmu.edu", and login as "anonymous", a password of your userid. 2) As your first ftp command after the login, issue the following: cd /usr/chandhok/public/prep !!! IF YOU DO NOT FOLLOW STEP 2 EXACTLY, YOU WILL GET AN ERROR !!! 3) Next, issue the following command (in ascii mode, BTW), and substitute the version number for the ?? get prepv??.sea.hqx 4) On your macintosh, use binhex or Stuffit to un-binhex the file. You will end up with an application, which, when double clicked, will unpack itself as (at least) two files: * The Prep Application * The documentation in PREP format The unpacking may result in a release folder containing all the files, depending on what version you are retrieving. Please send bugs and comments to prep-project+@andrew.cmu.edu We will only allow for anonymous ftp access to this application if we get feedback from people, otherwise it is not worth it to us. See the About Box of the application for more info. The PREP Editor is Copyright (c) 1990 by the PREP Editor Group of Carnegie Mellon University. All rights reserved. Do not distribute without permission. All trademarks are property of their respective owners.