4.1312 Rs: Mac & IBMs; Audio Tapes (2/78)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Thu, 2 May 91 22:59:29 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 1312. Thursday, 2 May 1991.

(1) Date: Tue, 30 Apr 91 11:23:52 CDT (40 lines)
From: Charles Ess <DRU001D@SMSVMA>
Subject: Re: 4.1300 Queries

(2) Date: Wed, 1 May 1991 23:08 CDT (38 lines)
From: "John D. Jones" <6563JONESJ@MUCSD.BITNET>
Subject: RESPONSE TO KELLER'S QUERY

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 91 11:23:52 CDT
From: Charles Ess <DRU001D@SMSVMA>
Subject: Re: 4.1300 Queries (9/154)

Re. Tom Benson's query regarding Greek on Mac or IBM.

I'll bow the advice of my many betters on this list, should they disagree
-- but I think I'd take the Mac for Greek.
Reasons: as T. Benson noted, you can get a very nice Mac for prices
quite comparable to IBM clones. In addition, Greek fonts for wordprocessing
on the Mac appear to be easy to come by and relatively cheap (e.g. "MacGreek"
from Linguist's Software, bundled with Hebrew and Phonetics fonts for $129.95).
By contrast, my beloved Nota Bene's requirements for handling Greek are
markedly more expensive, both in terms of hardware and software requirements
(special video display card and monitor, lots of patches and printer
drivers along with the basic software, etc.). While I have seen some
IBM sales literature boasting of much easier foreign language handling
under Windows 3.0 -- I've yet to be convinced that Windows 3.0 is little
other than an expensive (in terms of hardware and software requirements)
effort to make an IBM work like a Mac, -- an effort that still seems
plagued by extraordinary complexity with regard to installation, file
management, etc., and the embarrassingly frequent failure of the system
to function at all.

As an additional consideration: when the Perseus Project becomes commercially
available, it will be of extraordinary value to _anyone_ who has to take up
with classical Greek civilization. Perseus would require the addition of
a CD-ROM player and, ideally, a video-disk player -- but it brings to
its users an extraordinary library of classical Greek materials. (Yes,
those are stars in my eyes.) And it runs on a Mac...

I'll probably use Nota Bene on my Zenith 8086 until I die -- but then
again, I don't do much Greek.

I would be delighted to see that all of the above comments are entirely
uninformed, wrongheaded, politically incorrect, ideologically motivated,
etc. If not, I hope it helps.

Charles Ess
Drury College
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------50----
Date: Wed, 1 May 1991 23:08 CDT
From: "John D. Jones" <6563JONESJ@MUCSD.BITNET>
Subject: RESPONSE TO KELLER'S QUERY

I am not aware of any printed material although I would be interested in
learning about the existence of such material. For what it is worth, I
experimented with cassettes but stopped using them for commentary on rough
drafts of papers leading to rewrites.

A. On the positive side:

1. I was able to make detailed commentary far more efficiently on tape than by
writing or by use of the computer simply because I can talk much faster than I
can can write or type. I generally keyed comments to numbers in the margins of
their papers (except of course for general comments.)

2. Voice commentary has a personal touch which students appreciate -- especially
when the sounds of family life (ringing phones, barking dogs and screaming
children) intrude into the background of the tape.

B. On the negative side:

1. Collecting and transporting student papers and tapes is rather cumbersome. I
found it easiest to have students submit their papers and tape in a large
envelope. (This is more a minor inconvenience.)

2. Students found it time consuming to listen to the tape and more importantly
to to go back and listen to selected portions of the tape. It simply takes far
longer to search through a tape than to scan through written material. For
many students, this drawback seemed to outweigh other benefits of the tapes at
least so far as comments were used as an aid to re-writing. It was for this
reason that I discontinued the process.

John D. Jones
Philosophy Department
Marquette University
6563JONESJ@MUCSD