Divvun project updates and milestones

The originally planned status for the Divvun project as of beginning 2006 was:

• aSpell-ALPHA
• started corpus building
• contract signed with subcontractor, and cooperation established
• new, xml-based lexicon format (not really part of the official plan, but it was on my whish-list before we start the cooperation with external companies)

Relevant for this overview is also the next milestones:

Jul. 1st, 2006:

First testversion of Northern Saami and Lule Saami spellchecker for office programs (MSOffice-ALPHA, OpenOffice.org-ALPHA), first testversion of Northern Saami hyphenator (InDesign-ALPHA). Text collection is done.

Jan. 1st, 2007:

The second testversions of all the spellcheckers are ready (aSpell-BETA, MSOffice-BETA, OpenOffice.org-BETA, InDesign-BETA).

Jul. 1st, 2007:

The spellchechers are ready, and version 1.0 is released (aSpell-FINAL, MSOffice-FINAL, OpenOffice.org-FINAL, InDesign-FINAL).

sep. 30tt, 2007

The project is terminated, all documentation and project information is finished and delivered to a permanent maintenance organisation. Eventual errors from the 1.0 version are corrected.

The actual situation is slightly different:

• DONE:
  • aSpell-ALPHA
  • started corpus building (but not as much as planned)
• NOT DONE:
  • subcontractor contract and established cooperation
  • new, xml-based lexicon format (but we are making progress with our name lexicon)

General remarks

• still delayed by the risten.no work last spring
• corpus contracts took considerably longer time to finish than expected
• the same is true for the public tender process (which is far from finished)
• it was good to have a goal and deadline for our aSpell-ALPHA, it helped us focus and finish in time

As a consequence of the delays with the subcontractors, we need to modify our schedule a bit. Here's the suggested changes:

Jul. 1st, 2006:

Text collection is done. sme-aSpell-BETA is finished, we open our public testing, small-scale as a start, to get some experience and feedback on the testing procedure and user experience and cooperation. smj-aSpell-ALPHA finished.

Oct. (Nov.?) 1st, 2006:

First testversion of Northern Saami and Lule Saami spellchecker for office programs (MSOffice-ALPHA, OpenOffice.org-ALPHA), first testversion of Northern Saami hyphenator (InDesign-ALPHA).

Feb. 1st, 2007:

The second testversions of all the spellcheckers are ready (smj-aSpell-BETA, MSOffice-BETA, OpenOffice.org-BETA, InDesign-BETA).

Jul. 1st, 2007:

The spellchechers are ready, and version 1.0 is released (aSpell-FINAL, MSOffice-FINAL, OpenOffice.org-FINAL, InDesign-FINAL).

sep. 30tt, 2007

The project is terminated, all documentation and project information is finished and delivered to a permanent maintenance organisation. Eventual errors from the 1.0 version are corrected.