Tools to use in this project

Overview

Gecko is the starting point and the primary tool we will use to assess and to edit the Voice Annotation files. The annotations are stored in JSON files which are just structured text files. JSON is often stored without any line breaks and can look like a single line of text in many simple text editor. That's called compressed format. Gecko can also read a formated JSON file which has both line breaks and indenting for easier reading. Don't try to do this manually there are tools for that.

Gecko

Gecko has been forked and customize as part of the LET-Voice-Annotation project. You can download the repository using git or as a .zip file and run it on your own personal computer MacOS, Windows or Linux. It is also available on the LET webserver at: https://let.rmati.ca/gecko

Git

We are using GitHub primarily to manange the revisions of the JSON files, but is is also where Gecko itself is being developed so that makes it comvienent. You can also use GetHUb Desktop, or just look at Git-scm for choices. Most IDE's will have support for git built in or as an extension too.

Text Editor and/or IDE

Some editors will be better suited to editing JSON than others. Microsoft makes a IDE called Visual Studio Code, which runs on Windows, MacOS and Linux and is free for personal use (which this is). It can format and compress JSON files and has many other features too, including built-in Git support. I recommend you download and install it for this project, it's pretty large and complex but it's a good match for the tools needed here.

diff/merge tool

There are many diff and merge tools too. VS Code has it's own but you can also get separate apps. You will need some sort of diff and some sort of merge tool. Some are command-line only others have a GUI. WinMerge works for me as an adjunct to VS Code.