3 ms·

there was software called Copernic Summarizer ~25 years ago that was so useful for taking huge articles and condensing them into a paragraph. I have no idea how

there was software called Copernic Summarizer ~25 years ago that was so useful for taking huge articles and condensing them into a paragraph. I have no idea how it worked. At some point i lost access to several pieces of software i bought in that era, also including ambrosia software's catalog which i had purchased. I think i lost my gte email address or something, can hardly remember. I haven't used chatgpt (or whatever) for summaries in a couple of years, so i have no idea what SOTA is; although "chat with a document" seems like it'd be more useful in general than a summary for the way i eschew long-form articles.

PaulHoule 1y ago
For me chat with a paragraph in a language I sorta know (Japanese) or wish I knew (Chinese) is really useful. I ask for a translation and see discordances with what I can read and ask about them and get good answers. I also can lean on translations from my text and insist that certain words get used, etc.
vjvjvjvjghv 1y ago
They also had Copernic desktop search which was really good until they enshittified it slowly.
- genewitch 1y ago
  thankfully "everything.exe" is everything i need. not affiliated, it's just really nice on windows. On linux, mlocate and the like are fine, although i find myself doing a `find / -name foo` most often. I don't use Mac, but i have an understanding that spotlight/sherlock or whatever isn't as good as it was in the past. Someday i'll actually put all my documents into a document database so i can search stuff inside the documents. Did Copernic desktop search do that? Windows ~98 could; it was real slow back then. I have so many "documents" that even if windows still allows searching within files (it probably does) i reckon it'd kill my hard drives eventually.
  - vjvjvjvjghv 1y ago
    Yes. Copernic desktop search indexed document content. And it was quick. It's pretty hard to understand that MS still can't do useful search
kqr 1y ago
> I have no idea how it worked. I traced down this through an academic article which favourably compared it to other summarising solutions back in 2006. It might help answer the question: https://web.archive.org/web/20070209101837/http://www.copernic.com/data/pdf/summarization-whitepaper-eng.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20070209101837/http://www.copern...

PaulHoule 1y ago

For me chat with a paragraph in a language I sorta know (Japanese) or wish I knew (Chinese) is really useful. I ask for a translation and see discordances with what I can read and ask about them and get good answers. I also can lean on translations from my text and insist that certain words get used, etc.

vjvjvjvjghv 1y ago

They also had Copernic desktop search which was really good until they enshittified it slowly.

genewitch 1y ago
thankfully "everything.exe" is everything i need. not affiliated, it's just really nice on windows. On linux, mlocate and the like are fine, although i find myself doing a `find / -name foo` most often. I don't use Mac, but i have an understanding that spotlight/sherlock or whatever isn't as good as it was in the past. Someday i'll actually put all my documents into a document database so i can search stuff inside the documents. Did Copernic desktop search do that? Windows ~98 could; it was real slow back then. I have so many "documents" that even if windows still allows searching within files (it probably does) i reckon it'd kill my hard drives eventually.
- vjvjvjvjghv 1y ago
  Yes. Copernic desktop search indexed document content. And it was quick. It's pretty hard to understand that MS still can't do useful search

kqr 1y ago

> I have no idea how it worked. I traced down this through an academic article which favourably compared it to other summarising solutions back in 2006. It might help answer the question: https://web.archive.org/web/20070209101837/http://www.copernic.com/data/pdf/summarization-whitepaper-eng.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20070209101837/http://www.copern...