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<H1><A NAME="SECTION00060000000000000000">The nature of EAGLES project work and results so far</A></H1>
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LE EAGLES is firmly situated as the natural continuation of the work begun in LRE EAGLES, which was
positively received, in the inherently long-term standardisation process.
LE EAGLES, in the same way as LRE
EAGLES, brings together representatives of major collaborative European R&D projects in relevant
areas, to determine which aspects of our field are open to short-term de facto standardisation and to
encourage the development of such standards for the benefit of consumers and producers of language
technology. This work is being conducted with a view to providing the foundation for any future
recommendations for International Standards that may be formulated under the aegis of <A NAME="tex2html12" HREF="http://www.iso.ch/" target="_top">ISO</A>.
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EAGLES
work towards de facto standards is intended to allow the field to establish broad consensus on key issues,
providing thus an opportunity for consolidation and a basis for technological advance and expansion of
knowledge.
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An action for developing standards has, by its nature, to define and
propose specifications, guidelines and
recommendations which will have to be then primarily implemented in other LE projects and by the LE
community at large.
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The LRE EAGLES project and several previous projects that led
up to LRE EAGLES accomplished much preparatory work:
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<UL>
<LI> Analysis of user needs;
<LI> Specification of requirements and priorities with regard
to standards in the LE communities;
<LI> Design of methodologies for validation of the project results;
<LI> Design of strategies for dissemination of results and involvement of
prospective users (often LE projects themselves); and
<LI> Detailed planning of subsequent stages, including assessment of feasibility.
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More importantly, LRE EAGLES was active in:
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<UL>
<LI> Development and validation of
recommendations and guidelines; and
<LI> Documentation and dissemination of results to the LE community.
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</UL>
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The results of LRE EAGLES are currently available in both hypertext form
and printed form, constituting the <A NAME="tex2html13" HREF="http://www.ilc.cnr.it/EAGLES96/browse.html" target="_top">EAGLES Guidelines</A> of 1996. The reader is asked to note
that the available documentation currently varies in the quality of presentation.
Not all documents have yet been converted for mounting as hyperdocuments and
not all links are active yet. When first set up, EAGLES had not envisaged
production of hyperdocuments, thus this activity was tackled effectively
outwith the normal programme of work, once it became clear that the World
Wide Web offered an important medium for dissemination. LE EAGLES however
has fully integrated hyperdocument production in its programme of work.
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The current continuation, in the form of LE EAGLES is pursuing
the development of standards, their validation, documentaiton and
dissemination, in those
priority areas and for those topics identified towards the end of LRE EAGLES.
The set of topics retained is modest, as previously, reflecting the modest
amound of funding available. Moreover, although there is a not
insignificant number of people working on EAGLES, much of the labour is
offered on a voluntary basis, hence expectations are necessarily reduced
in scope compared to the normal type of R&D or RTD project.
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