Alternatives to WordCruncher? (LEXA, OpenText, etc.)

Mark Davies (mdavies@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu)
Fri, 26 Jan 1996 21:19:28 -0600

I've been using WordCruncher for text retrieval for as long as I can
remember, but am considering the possibility of moving to another program.
WordCruncher has been promising a Windows upgrade forever, but the beta copy
I have (Feb/Mar 95 build) still lacks many of the features of the DOS
version that I depend on so much, especially saving and retrieving lists
(infinitives, etc).

I work with corpora the size of about 1,000,000 to 10,000,000 words each, so
something like TACT wouldn't be sufficient. I typically do fairly robust
Boolean and proximity searches (eg. 200,000 tokens of clitics immediately
followed by one of 300,000 infinitives, which it can do in a couple of
seconds). I also need the ability to save and retrieve files (eg. all
clitics, all infinitives). It would be nice if it were a Windows program,
but I could live with one for DOS. Most constraining of all, I can't spend
more than about $200 for the program (well, maybe a BIT more).

I realize this might be a FAQ-type question, but I've looked around some
corpus linguistics Web pages, and can't seem to find what I've just
described. I've run across mention of the "Lexa" program by ICAME, but
haven't actually downloaded it yet, as well as some software by OpenText
Systems (I visited their Web site, but all of the stuff looked like
"industrial strength" programs - eg. for creating 5-10 GB indices of Web
pages, etc). Any suggestions / comments on these or other programs would be
appreciated.

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Mark Davies, Assistant Professor, Spanish Linguistics
Dept. of Foreign Languages, Illinois State University
Normal, IL 61790-4300

Voice:309/438-7975 email:mdavies@ilstu.edu
Fax:309/438-8038 http://www.ilstu.edu/~mdavies/welcome.htm
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