RE: OED, CD-ROMS, Hard drives, etc.

[Peter Evans peterev@xxxxxxxx]

Robert Holmgren pipedreamt:
>> [The OED] looks like a
>> formidable engine to me. Finding words by their definition, among other
>> things... Searching for quotes by date or author... Searching the
>> whole text in numerous ways... Wow.

Dorothy Day added encouragement:
>The online version of the OED is powered by the Open Text search engine,
>which really *is* one of the best out there, and I imagine that's what
>is bundled with the CD-ROM version.

Let's not get too carried away here. Version 1.13 of the software for the
OED on CD-ROM (I've never used the online version) is by AND Software B.V.
of Rotterdam (and is mysteriously labeled "(c) 1994"). Yes, it is indeed
easy to do such things as find any word whose definition contains the word
"apricot"--this takes only a few seconds. And of course, it's easy to look
up a particular word in the conventional way. Since the definition of a
word may take several screens, the outline provided is most helpful.
Because of all this, I got my circa $350 worth and I'm not complaining.

However, it's harder to do some other things, such as to look for
quotations by author or book. This isn't a matter of the search engine but
of the data themselves. Consider for example *Nightmare Abbey* by Thomas
Love Peacock. One book, one author, you might think. Well, not quite;
instead *six* author/title permutations:

Peacock
 Nightm. Abbey     1

Peacock, T.
 Nightmare Ab.     2
 Nightm. Abbey     1

Peacock, T. L.
 Nightm. Abbey     3
 Nightmare Abb.    3
 Nightmare Abbey    7

And it's more complicated still: some of these definitions are identified
by year of edition, some aren't. Some are identified by chapter, some by
page number (some by both). Presumably the "default" edition is identified
in the abbreviated bibliography that appears in the back of the printed
OED--no bibliography is provided with the CD-ROM.

Now that I've depressed y'all, I'll reassure you a little. By
Search|Quotation|Title [typing in "nightm"] |List, one gets a list of
titles that includes the four above (all obviously relevant), as well as
"Nightmare" (which turns out to be unrelated), and miscellanea such as
"Nightmare at Dawn" and "Nightmare in Manhattan". So one just chooses each
of the likely titles, one after the other.

Thus the CD-ROM is after all searchable with moderate ease. But don't send
off $320 on the misapprehension that the OED on CD-ROM has been copy-edited
and rendered fully consistent for The Digital Age. (And you can have any
background color you want, as long as it's white.)

Sorry for the long, Xy-unrelated message, but more than one person seemed
interested.
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Peter Evans