🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan7.022358.17046@sifon.cc.mcgill.ca> ouij@triples.math.mcgill.ca (Luigi Perrotta) writes:

   I think a long time ago (circa 1990) I remembered
   reading about a project out of university of waterloo
   in which they were doing a comphresive effort to put
   the complete oxford english dictionary into an
   electronic format.  Has this been done?

Yes, the OED 2. edition is out. It is available from Oxford University Press.

It is NOT cheap.

Nils-Eivind Naas, ISAF, Oslo

> I think a long time ago (circa 1990) I remembered
> reading about a project out of university of waterloo
> in which they were doing a comphresive effort to put
> the complete oxford english dictionary into an
> electronic format.  Has this been done?

I don't know about the U of W-loo, but Oxford itself
put the dictionary on CD-ROM years ago.   In 1992 they 
came out with a far better version.  

I heard a radio interview with the leader
of the OED project, who described the travails of
some hapless grad student.  It seems this poor soul
had just spent 14 months researching Shakespeare's
influence on the English language and had accumulated 
several thousand citations.  He then when down to 
Oxford to try out this new-fangled electronic gizmo. 
In under a minute, the computer/CD-ROM combo unearthed
approximately 33,000 citations.

Reportedly, the grad student fainted dead away.

I'm not sure what the price is, but it's probably
going to be fairly high.

Jeremy Barth    IEEE, Inc.    jbarth@ieee.org

>>>>> On Thu, 7 Jan 1993 13:21:24 GMT, nenaas@ulrik.uio.no (Nils-Eivind Naas) said:
NN> Nntp-Posting-Host: ulrik

NN> In article <1993Jan7.022358.17046@sifon.cc.mcgill.ca> ouij@triples.math.mcgill.ca (Luigi Perrotta) writes:

>    I think a long time ago (circa 1990) I remembered
>    reading about a project out of university of waterloo
>    in which they were doing a comphresive effort to put
>    the complete oxford english dictionary into an
>    electronic format.  Has this been done?

NN> Yes, the OED 2. edition is out. It is available from Oxford University Press.

NN> It is NOT cheap.

Cheap is a relative term.  It is about 1/3 of the cost of the paper edition.

The first edition OED on CD, even with its clunky retrieval software,
was an incredibly useful item for a writer friend of mine, and he
considered it money well spent.

Incidentally, setting that one up was fun.  He had one of the first
dozen of the first Phillips CD-ROM drives imported into the states.
You know you're going to be having fun when you see serial numbers
that low...
--
David A. Van Cleef			AT&T Bell Laboratories
internet: dvc@eagle.hr.att.com		Red Hill Facility, Middletown, NJ
					+1 908 615 4906

Here at the U. of Illinois the OED is accessable through the network using
software written locally and it is absolutely terrific.  My understanding
is that this is available under license elsewhere.  Here the software is
called oed2.

Roger Koenker
Department of Economics

PS.  I don't know about other dictionaries, but would like to.