Re: General Purpose Dictionary Generator

--- Benct Philip Jonsson <bpjonsson@...> wrote:

> Gary Shannon skrev:
>
>  > For any such specialized features that could not simply be
>  > implemented as a custom data field in the database, one
>  > could always make modifications to the Java source code,
>  > which will be public domain.
>
> I hope it would not be too specialized to allow search by
> regular expressions in the standard version. I often find
> myself wanting to search for words based on criteria like
> "t between vowels", "stops after nasals" "velars followed
> by front vowels" and whatnot, which I can't do in my
> current db application, and I wouldn't know how to alter
> the source code...
>
> --
>
>
> /BP 8^)>
> --
> Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se
I think I need to distinguish between the database application, which might be
a spreadsheet program or even a text editor like notepad, and the separate
program that reads the database file to generate the dictionary.

Initially I'm going to focus on the dictionary generation. I think it might
even be more useful not to think of it as specifically a dictionary generator,
but as a general purpose spreadsheet/database to HTML conversion utility.

IF your spreadsheet happens to represent dictionary entries, and your HTML
template happens to look like a dictionary page, then it becomes a dictionary
generator. But if your database, or XML file happen to contain your bird
watching lists giving which species you have spotted and where you've spotted
them, and your HTML template looks like a bird watcher's diary then it becomes
a personal bird watching diary page generator.

In other words, instead of implementing the detailed features that each
individual might want or need, I'm going to try to make it very easy for each
individual to implement those features for themselves.

As for regular expression searches, you might try note tab light (
http://www.notetab.com/ ) a nice little text editor that can read CSV files
from spreadsheets and will do regexp searches, and line sorting. It's a
freebie, and well worth having. I use it for regexp search and replace to
extract and sort all the unique words from a text file, like a Gutenburg
e-text.

Later, after the HTML generator is working, I might take a look at writing a
database-type application for creating and maintaining a dictionary (or bird
watching) file.

--gary