Excellence Project 2008
Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo

Department of Linguistic and Performing Arts
Padua University

ISTC – Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies
Italian National Research Council

AMDV

Multimedia Atlas of Veneto Dialects

Graziano Tisato
Project ideation and direction
Fieldwork interviews, software and databases, phonetic research
tisato@pd.istc.cnr.it

Alberto Zamboni – Laura Vanelli – Enzo Croatto – Vincenzo Galatà
Giovanni Tomasi – John Trumper – Giorgio Vedovelli
Linguistic consultants

Maria Teresa Vigolo – Paola Barbierato
Lexical-etymologic research

Vincenza Castellani
AIS transcription

Giacomo Ferrieri
Phonetic transcription

Carla Gentili
AIS legend translation

Vincenza Castellani – Enzo Croatto – Luciana Palla – Rolando Zandonella
Ethnographic comment transcription

Daniela Perco – Glauco Sanga – Luciana Palla
Ethnographic consultants

AIS Archives, Bern University – Institute of the Linguistic Italian Atlas, Turin University – Museo Etnografico della Provincia di Belluno – Museo Etnografico di Cavarzano, Belluno – Accademia Olimpica, Vicenza – Angelo Colla ed. – Istituto Luce, Rome
Ethnographic documentation

Lorenzo Viola
Paintings

Paul Boesch – Patrizia Pizzolotto – Serafina Prest
Drawings

Paul Scheuermeier – Ugo Pellis – Angelo Sacchet – Germano Benetti – Domenico Cosenza – Gianfranco De Pasqual – Cristina Finotto – Andrea Hallgass – Adriana Lissandrini – Luisa Manfroi – Matteo Rivoira – Graziano Tisato – Maria Pia Villavecchia
Pictures

Alberto Benin – Elisabetta Feltrin – Antonio Zanonato
Videos

ARPAV
Agenzia Regionale per la Prevenzione e Protezione Ambientale del Veneto
Veneto map

Vincenzo Galatà – Leopoldo Saggin
Beta test

Version 2.15 - 22-12-2014

amdv setup

1.  Introduction

2.  AMDV overview

3.  AMDV setup

3.1.  System requirements

3.2.  Download

3.3.  AMDV Install

3.4.  Matlab Runtime Install

3.5.  AMDV Launch

3.6.  AMDV uninstall

3.7.  Errors

4.  Related info:

4.1.  NavigAIS (the navigable version of the Linguistic and Ethnographic Atlas of Italy and Southern Switzerland)

4.2.  NavigAIS overview

▲1. Introduction

The Multimedia Atlas of Veneto Dialects (AMDV, acronym from the Italian Atlante Multimediale dei Dialetti Veneti) is an interdisciplinary project which brought together a team of dialectology, etymology, and voice processing researchers, with the purpose to create a talking linguistic atlas of the dialects of the Veneto region (north-east of Italy), according to the current geolinguistic methodologies.

The AMDV is mainly focused on the diachronic comparison of the lexical maps of the Sprach- und Sachatlas Italiens und der Südschweiz (Linguistic and Ethnographic Atlas of Italy and Southern Switzerland) (AIS) by the Swiss linguists Karl Jaberg and Jakob Jud, with the records collected in the same localities at the present time (Fig. 1).

The AMDV was conceived by Graziano Tisato on the model of recent digital atlases (ALEPO [Telmon, 1985], ALD [Goebl, 1994], VIVALDI [Kattenbusch 1995], ecc.), exploiting the experience gained some years ago during his previous work, in the context of the Trentino dialects Il Trentino dei contadini. Piccolo atlante sonoro della cultura materiale [A. Mott, G. Kezich, G. Tisato, 2003].

The realization of the project took place between January 2009 and January 2013 with a grant of € 120,000 of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Padova and Rovigo for the 2008 excellence projects. Although the funding could not cover all the costs, the work was completed with the free contribution of various people.

Between 2013 and 2014, all texts, and the audio and video documents, and the AMDV software have been subject to thorough review.

Fig. 1 – AIS Map n. 488 – Il passero (the sparrow).

After the AMDV installation, you can compare this screen shot with what you get on your computer, to verify that the AMDV font in use has all the required diacritics.

Fig. 2 – P. Scheuermeier – Picture n. 387 (Cavarzere, 31/3/1921).

After the AMDV installation, please compare this screen shot with what you get on your computer, to verify that the AMDV font in use has all the required diacritics.

▲3. AMDV Setup

▲3.1. System requirements

The current version (2.15 - 21-12-2014) of the AMDV software has been tested on the following Operating Systems: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8.

The software requires 1 GB of RAM for Windows XP, and 2 GB for Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.

The total space required on the hard disk is about 11.4 GB.

The program was designed for a very high screen resolution: photos and drawings have been digitized in Ultra HD (about 3000x2000 px), so there is a better graphic performance when the screen resolution is comparable.

AMDV makes use of a large amount of diacritics (Combining Diacritic Marks) and some IPA characters (IPA extension), which are necessary to display properly the AMDV phonetic transcriptions.

By default, the font used in the AMDV is the Times New Roman, which provides in the version 5.01 and higher, 112 diacritics and all the required phonetic characters. If this font is not already present in the computer, the AMDV setup tries to install an appropriate version of the Times New Roman (from the amdv\Font directory).

Alternatively, if the user prefers a different font, he must replace the “Times New Roman” string in the AMDV configuration file amdv\Data\amdv.ini with the chosen font name.

When the AMDV starts, it checks that all the required diacritics are actually contained in the chosen font. A message informs if there are missing characters (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 – AMDV font message: missing diacritic characters in the chosen font.

The user is asked (Fig. 4) to replace the signaled font with another among those found by the software in the computer, and containing the required diacritics. After the AMDV installation, you can compare the screen shots of Fig. 1-2 with what you get on your computer, to verify that the AMDV font in use has all the required diacritics.

Fig. 4 – AMDV font message: The setup shows the list of installed fonts containing all the diacritics required by AMDV and waits for the user’s choice.

▲3.2. AMDV download

Download the following module in a temporary directory of your choice:

AMDV.zip https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XqDMsLFDCjoFHZ4l4k4gLccPV2W_sf7_

The module total size is about 11 GB, so the download requires a time which depends on the user net connection speed (for ex. 1 h with an 25 Mbs connection).

▲3.3. AMDV Install

Decompress the AMDV.zip module in the temporary directory, and run the AMDV_setup.exe file as admin (press the right mouse button on the module name and select “Install as administrator”).

In the AMDV setup initial window, which appears, click the Next button.

The setup asks for the folder path, in which to copy the AMDV modules. We recommend to avoid to choose the system folders.

After copying the files on the chosen directory, the setup ends, clicking the Finish button, and launching the Matlab Runtime (MCR) installer, which is a set of shared libraries, necessary to the AMDV execution on computers without an installed MCR 7.14 or 2010b version of MATLAB. The user can skip this step unsetting the MCR checkbox.

The successive AMDV installations don't need to reinstall the MCR.

▲3.4. Matlab Runtime Install

As told before, the setup installs the MCR runtime, if not already done. When the MATLAB Runtime Installer starts, it preliminary checks the presence of a Visual C library and could display the following box. Click Next to proceed with the Visual C library installation.

Then to proceed with the MATLAB Runtime installation, press the Next button.

The setup asks some user information.

The setup shows a default directory path, where to install the MATLAB runtime. Optionally you could give a different path clicking on the Change button.

Note:  On Windows systems, you can have multiple versions of the MATLAB runtime on your computer, but only one installation for any particular version. If you already have an existing installation, the MATLAB runtime Installer does not display the Folder Selection dialog box because you can only overwrite the existing installation in the same folder.

Under certain conditions, the MCR installer can indicate the lack of .NET framework:

.NET Framework 2.0 is not installed. If you require it, select Cancel and install .NET Framework first. Otherwise, select OK to continue.

AMDV don't use the .NET Framework, so continue, clicking OK.

Finally, click Finish to exit the MCR installer.

▲3.6. AMDV Launch

By default, the AMDV setup puts on the desktop an icon, which launches AMDV.bat and uses, as splash screen, some Lorenzo Viola paintings, accompanied by a Chioggia folk song.

If you want to skip the splash screen, you can run, instead, AMDV_no_logo.bat, which starts AMDV more quickly, may be adding also the related icon on the desktop.

Both AMDV.bat and AMDV_no_logo.bat check the presence of other AMDV running instances and ask the user whether to launch another instance or not.

It is also possible to straight launch AMDV, clicking amdv.exe, which cannot verify the concurrent instances.

▲3.6. AMDV uninstall

As usually, AMDV can be uninstalled from the control panel, or from Start → All Programs → AMDV → Uninstall AMDV.

From the control panel you can also uninstall the Matlab MCR runtime (Matlab Compiler Runtime 7.14), which is deliberately left for general use.

▲3.7. Errors

In the case the Matlab run-time installation (see Cap. 3.4) has not been made or has failed, you may receive the following message, launching the execution of AMDV_logo.exe (or AMDV_no_logo.exe, or amdv.exe):

Could not find version 7.14 of the MCR...

The advice is to install, if you have not already done so, or reinstall the run-time of Matlab, according to the instructions given in Cap. 3.4.

Another (remote) possibility of error can be caused by the lack of the Java Virtual Machine (JRE, which is provided by default with the AMDV software) on your computer. In this case simply install the JRE (should be Java 1.6.0_17-b04 mixed mode).

One more source of error could be an incompatible version of Java installed, or more than one version of Java installed, or a Java bin path conflict (check in the environment variable PATH if it has the path to the java bin directory, if not add the path to bin directory).