CDROM Readme

Updates and additions

General Comments and Notes

Welcome! This is the ICSLP 96 CDROM. It contains several types of files and supports two general methods of access; via Acrobat reader, and via web browser. Acrobat software for Macintosh, Windows (3.1 and 95), and Unix is available for installation from the CDROM if needed. If your system contains a web browser like Netscape or Mosaic, you may alternatively use the browser to gain access to many of the features of the CDROM using the "Open File..." selection of the File menu. However, all technical papers from the proceedings are stored in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), and hence require a PDF viewer, even when accessed via a web browser.

To view the CDROM contents using an Acrobat reader, start with the file ICSLP96.PDF. If you are using a web browser, start with the file ICSLP96.HTM.

Although the actual file structure of the CDROM is relatively transparent when using either Acrobat or a web browser, it may be helpful to know how files are organized, for example, if you wish to locate and copy a waveform file from the CD for use with other software. The CDROM contains separate subdirectories for each volume of the ICSLP 96 proceedings, and within each volume directory, separate subdirectories for each paper. These individual paper directories have arbitrary numerical names derived from our internal document control system and contain (a) the PDF rendition of the manuscript, (b) ancillary waveform files (WAV files) if present, and (c) additional image files (supplied, e.g., as GIF files) if present. If additional image files are present, they will appear as additional PDF files within the directory, or in some cases, have been incorporated into the manuscript PDF file.

In preparing the CDROM, we have noticed a few things worth passing along to prospective users. These fall into three categories: limitations of the present technology; hints, tricks, and outright bugs relating to the supplied software; and errata. Each of these is discussed below. As we discover additional things and/or solutions to known problems, we will place this information on the ICSLP 96 web site at http://www.asel.udel.edu/icslp/. As soon as it is available, our web site will also contain information about cost and ordering of printed or CDROM proceedings for ICSLP 96.

Technological Limitations

  1. Some papers are harder to read on screen than others. Hard to read documents also tend to be more slowly rendered on the screen. This has to do with the types of fonts supplied in the postscript documents we received. The screen appearance does not effect the quality of the printed output for these documents.
  2. Some papers were not available in a machine readable format or we could not use the supplied machine readable information. These papers were scanned from the camera ready hard copy. Scanned pages are of intermediate screen image quality, but printed output should be indistinguishable from the original scanned copy. Unfortunately, scanned papers are not content searchable (but see the following comment). Consequently, we avoided using scanned images of manuscripts where possible, even if it led to slight differences in the appearance of the CDROM and printed copy (see the comment on differences in appearance under Errata).
  3. Since indexing is impossible for scanned images, where possible, the original file was included (with the extension .idx) and used in creating the index. If search results refer to such a file, there will be a bookmark in that file referring to its corrected counterpart (with the same basename and a .pdf extension).

Hints, Tricks, Bugs

  1. If your PDF viewer is set to "greek" text, very small text, especially in equations, cannot be seen (even at high magnification). This can be avoided by unselecting the 'greek text below _ pixels' option in the 'General Preferences' box of Acroread.
  2. We believe all waveform files are in RIFF (WAV) format. However, the hyperlinks contained in the PDF documents use a QuickTime Movie link for playback of audio files. Unix versions of Adobe's Acroread do not (at present) support the QuickTime Movie format, but we understand that this support will be available in the future. As a workaround, use one of the freely available playback programs designed for your Unix system to "manually" play the files. See our web site if you need assistance in locating such software.
  3. Hyperlinks to waveforms on Windows 95 systems are not handled correctly. A slider will appear briefly then disappear and no audio will be heard. Adobe reports that this bug will be fixed in the next release of their QuickTime player which should be available in late October 1996. As a work-around, we suggest opening WAV files in the the Windows 95 sound file player, or double clicking the sound file icon for the file to be played.
  4. In a few cases, graphs appear to "blow up" with incorrectly drawn lines going far outside the bounds of the figure. These graphs may be viewable by reducing the PDF reader magnification, or printing out the page in question.
  5. We have found several instances of PDF files failing on a single type of computer system and/or with a specific release of a PDF reader program, but working in most instances. If you experience problems, particularly "Unable to generate font" problems, see if the file can be viewed on a different computer or with a different version of the PDF reader program.
  6. The author index with hyperlinks to manuscripts is only available as an HTML (web browser) document. The link in ICSLP96.PDF to the author index is thus a www link, and not a PDF hyperlink. You will need to have a web browser configured within Acrobat to follow this link.

Errata

  1. Some authors didn't indicate in their documents where links to additional sound or image files should be placed. In this case, links were created on an additional page appended to the original document and the sound or image files were listed in alphanumeric sequence by filename.
  2. The appearance of some papers may differ slightly between CDROM and the printed (proceedings) copy. The conversion from postscript to PDF can lose some information, particularly related to shading in graphs. Wherever we noticed this, the printed proceedings contains the image as received in the camera ready hard copy. However, to avoid scanning pages (and losing content search capabilities), we allowed small shading differences in figures on the CDROM as long as the figures appeared to remain interpretable.
  3. There are a few papers that appear on the CDROM that do not appear in the printed proceedings. These were papers delivered after the printing date for the hard copies. Printed versions of these papers were distributed as an addendum at the ICSLP 96 conference.
  4. A few papers which were received after the final program was printed have titles and/or authorship which does not exactly match the information in the program and in the CDROM tables of contents. We apologize for this discrepancy. Please see the Errata sheet in the Proceedings Addendum for a complete list of differences.
  5. The search index supplied with the CDROM did not contain paper titles. We have now build a search index which does include that information. With this new index, the titles of the papers are displayed as the results of a query, and, by clicking the 'Info' button, the paper's authors and its conference session code and title are also available. Unfortunately, we have found that the Acrobat reader software cannot follow links to indexed items unless both the index and referenced pdf file are located on the same file system. Thus, while the new index is more informative, it cannot be used to directly link papers on the CDROM. However, the new index can be used as an indirect link. When a paper in the index is highlighted, the index dialog box displays the path and name of the indexed paper. This information can be used to locate the file through the Acrobat Reader File menu. All the papers on the CDROM are divided into subdirectories by proceedings volume number and by a paper ID number. This information is shown in the index dialog box and can be used to find the corresponding paper in the CDROM using the file browser built into the Reader program. If, for example, a paper is listed as C:\ACROBAT\VOL1\A209\A209.PDF you would instead look on whatever drive contains the CDROM (e.g., D:) for D:\VOL1\A209\A209.PDF

Download the new search index: (7038k bytes)