TA's corner

INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMITTING ASSIGNMENTS & PROJECTS

All documents are to be submitted as e-mail attachments.
- For assignments: No other document formats other than PDF or plain ascii text are allowed. Submitted word documents or PostScipt files are not acctepted.
- For projects: Store required files in plain ascii text, JPEG, GIF or PDF format. Put all files under a directory which is named by your email address. Compress the directory which has only required files into .tgz, .tar.gz or .zip. Submitted more than 1 attachment will not be accepted.
Always state your full name and university id somewhere at the beginning of each file you submit.
All email submission should be from a UMD email account. This is to prevent spam filtering of your email.
All emails should have the sequence [CMSC723] at the beginning of the subject line.
The file names in the attachments should start with assignment1, assignment2, project1, or project2.
Email the assignments and projects to Adam Lee (adamlee@umiacs.umd.edu) and Christof Monz (christof@umiacs.umd.edu)

If you have any questions, please feel free to email Adam Lee (adamlee@umiacs.umd.edu).

COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM

There is a weekly colloquium hosted by the Laboratory for Computational Linguistics and Information Processing. You can find more information on that here: http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/research/CLIP/colloq/index.html . All those interested please feel free to attend.

NEWSGROUP ACCESS

There are many ways to access the csd.compling newsgroup:

If you are using a umd.edu account or you are off campus using a UMD dialup, click here to get to the compling newsgroup. This should bring up a netscape or mozilla browser. From there you can post messages (New -> Message) or reply to existing messages (Reply).
If you are off campus but not on a UMD dialup, you will need to authenticate using either the CS VPN or the Campus VPN. The campus VPN can be used by anyone with a wam UMD account. Click here for more info. Once you have authenticated, you should be able to click here to get to the compling newsgroup. This should bring up a netscape or mozilla browser. From there you can post messages (New -> Message) or reply to existing messages (Reply).
Other options:
1) ssh or telnet to any campus machine, and follow the "BASIC INSTRUCTIONS" below.
2) From text mode terminals, set the $NNTPSERVER environment variable to be news.umd.edu, and follow the "BASIC INSTRUCTIONS" below.
3) From a graphical news reader program, set news.umd.edu as the News Server (NNTP port 119), and use as email or messager program.

BASIC INSTRUCTIONS FOR ACCESSING NEWSGROUP FROM TERMINALS

Type tin -q csd.compling at the prompt.

Figure 1. You should see something like this on the screen after a few seconds...

To post a new article, press "w".

Figure 2. Type the subject for the new article at the prompt...

Press Enter and the editor mode appears. The default editor is vi. If you are more comfortable with another editor (say pico), set an environment variable before step 1 as follows:

First, find out which shell you are running by typing ECHO $SHELL at the prompt.

If you are running tcsh, type setenv EDITOR /usr/local/bin/pico, or the path to your favorite editor.

If you are running bash, type export EDITOR=/usr/local/bin/pico, or the path to your favorite editor.

Figures 3 & 4. Change your editor if needed...

Edit your article. When done, save and exit out of the editor. (You should know how to do this for your editor, whatever it may be). You will be asked if you want to post. Press:

p to post.
q to quit without posting.
o to postpone the article.
e to re-edit the article.

To abort this article, exit without posting and say Y at the abort prompt.

Figure 5. Edit the article in your favorite editor..

If you want to post a follow-up to an already existing article, select the article by pressing ENTER at the main window of the news reader (Figure 1 above) and press f. Follow the same editing instructions as if posting a new article. If you want to send email to the poster (and only him/her), press r to do that and again, follow the same instructions.