4.0881 Responses: Jan. 15; "praesul"; Mac SpellChecker (6/123)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Sun, 13 Jan 91 17:34:12 EST

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0881. Sunday, 13 Jan 1991.


(1) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 91 11:53 +0200 (11 lines)
From: RWERMAN@HUJIVMS
Subject: RE: Jan. 15

(2) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 91 12:01 GMT (19 lines)
From: Don Fowler <DPF@vax.oxford.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: 4.0878 Queries (3/69)

(3) Date: Fri,11 Jan 91 13:55:43 GMT (13 lines)
From: N.J.Morgan@vme.glasgow.ac.uk
Subject: Re: 4.0878 Queries (3/69)

(4) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 91 09:33:34 EST (9 lines)
From: Brad Inwood <INWOOD@vm.epas.utoronto.ca>
Subject: Praesul query

(5) Date: Fri, 11 Jan 91 16:14:45 EST (17 lines)
From: Robert Hollander <bobh@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Subject: praesul

(6) Date: Sat, 12 Jan 91 09:53:49 EST (54 lines)
From: Brian Whittaker <BRIANW@VM2.YorkU.CA>
Subject: Mac language spell checkers

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 91 11:53 +0200
From: RWERMAN@HUJIVMS
Subject: RE: Jan. 15

As an Israeli on the net, I am not too far away from what is going on.
Can you make a closer connection?

__Bob Werman
The Hebrew Univesity
Jerusalem
rwerman@hujivms
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------28----
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 91 12:01 GMT
From: Don Fowler <DPF@vax.oxford.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: 4.0878 Queries (3/69)

I'm no expert on Renaissance Humanism, but on praesul the ever-
helpful Krebs-Schmalz Antibarbarus has the following note:

Fuer die Geschichte des Wortes praesul ist interessant, dass der
Papst Gelasius die Paepste praesules rerum divinarum nennt! Vgl. Archiv
XII S.5, wo einiges Material zu einer Geschichte des Bedeutungswandels
von praesul gegeben und auch das nach Gelasius gebildete Wort praesulatus
erwaehnt ist.

Archiv is the Archiv fuer Lateinische Lexicographie (the prelude to the
Thesaurus Linguae latinae), which is not to hand. For the history of the
word in antiquity, the relevant fascicle of the Thesaurus itself is
either out or just about to appear (I'm not up to date).

Don Fowler.
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------28----
Date: Fri,11 Jan 91 13:55:43 GMT
From: N.J.Morgan@vme.glasgow.ac.uk
Subject: Re: 4.0878 Queries (3/69)

It is now many years since I studied Milton as a history
undergraduate working on the English Civil War, but I would guess
the simple (and no doubt naieve) answer is that praesul was being
used to describe the episcopacy in a pejorative sense. For
better or worse I would put Milton as a puritan first, humanist
second.

Nicholas Morgan
Glasgow & Edinburgh
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------17----
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 91 09:33:34 EST
From: Brad Inwood <INWOOD@vm.epas.utoronto.ca>
Subject: Praesul query

A learned colleague confirms that praesul is used for bishop as early as
the fifth C A.D., and possibly in the fourth. We have not troubled to
hunt down textual evidence, but the place to look is Diehl's collection
_Inscrip- tiones Latinae Christianae Veteres_. It is apparently also
common in medieval English cathedral epitaphs.
(5) --------------------------------------------------------------31----
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 91 16:14:45 EST
From: Robert Hollander <bobh@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Subject: praesul

Bill Kupersmith wants to know about "praesul" as term for _bishop_. I've
just checked the Dartmouth Dante Project, hoping some 14th-c. commentator
might have offered a clue. Not really. But a good ten commentaries do
cite the text of the [Ambrosian?] hymn _Te lucis ante_ in response to
Dante's citation of its incipit at _Purg_. VIII, 13. The 4th verse asks
aid from God as "praesul et custodia"; not much help, I'm afraid, but
perhaps worth the notice. I have found the database of help with such
queries on other occasions. Those of you who would like to use it are
reminded that all you need is access to Internet; consultation is still
utterly w/o cost (blessings on Dartmouth). To subscribe for a free
acct. send e-mail to "dante@eleazar.dartmouth.edu" (you do need to have
an acct. in order to log on).

(6) --------------------------------------------------------------65----
Date: Sat, 12 Jan 91 09:53:49 EST
From: Brian Whittaker <BRIANW@VM2.YorkU.CA>
Subject: Mac language spell checkers

The NISUS word processor from Paragon Concepts comes with dictionary,
hyphenation dictionary and thesaurus for American English. One can also
purchase the same items for standard English (they call it British
English, although it is the sandard English everywhere in the English-
speaking world except the United States), and for German. The spelling
and hyphenation dictionaries, but not the thesaurus, are available for
French, Italian and Spanish. Specialized legal and medical dictionaries
are available in both American and "British" English. Nisus is also
available in complete foreign language versions in German, French
and Korean, the latter using "the Korean operating system hangulTalk",
according to the information that came with my package.

I use the (standard) English dictionary and thesaurus, as well as the
French and German dictionaries, and find them fast, efficient and
well-stocked. The English dictionary and thesaurus strike me as
better than the MS WORD counterparts, but that's a subjective
observation.

WORD is much more common among the Mac users at York, and I have
written both a stylistics text book for desk-top publishing and a
scholarly book on Old English for submission to a publisher using
WORD. However, I have used Nisus for a couple of years for things
that WORD could not handle and am now using NISUS to rewrite the
stylistics text book.

Most word processors are set up primarily for business corespondance
and most can handle little else with any ease or effectiveness.

NISUS is the only one that I have found for the MAC that a
Humanist can use as more than a typewriter.

There is a built-in GREP (Unix-style) search and replace function
that can be used for tasks as varied a translating formatting
codes from UNIX or from the Text Encoding Initiative into
Macintosh paragraphs, fonts and font styles, or for more
linguistic purposes such as concording or listing collocational
sets. The latest version of NISUS, 3.04, also has a built-in
scripting language for creating more sophisticated descriptive
funcitons.

NISUS also has a drawing layer that permits you to superimpose
graphics on the text, a very useful tool if you like to be
able to circle key words and draw arrows between repeated
words for intructional purposes.

Disclaimer: I have no connection with Paragon Concepts other
than as a very satisfied user.

Brian Whittaker
Atkinson College, York University