Re: Kura - status report

On Sun, 31 Oct 1999, taliesin the storyteller wrote:

> How modular is Kura? Maybe there should be an interlinear API and
> word-database API etc. so that one could slot in the pieces one wants, or
> simply not use the pieces one doesn't need.
Extremely modular - at least my experience is that I first write
something to just work, and then pull everything out and make it
modular, so I can build a large app, and still understand it ;-).
I think I can make it possible to just pass a list of parsing objects
to the text-separation bit, and then have it try each object in order,
and take the first answer, or something like that.

>
> Heh :) Who was it that said that ordinary applications were dead and
> that the web was the way to go? Will demand a bit of the browser,
> though, just look at Java's AWT, not exactly bristling with controls...
>
Charles, if I remember correctly. But what I meant was that Kura could
be some kind of special purpose browser, talking to the database via a
web server, not that Kura could be some kind of applet running inside,
say, Netscape or Internet Explorer. I've already succeeded in having a
single point of contact between the front-end and the database (a module
which generates SQL statements), so I could separate the application
at that point, and have the front-end (the special purpose browser Kura)
send xml-rpc (or indeed plain CGI requests) to the back-end (that what's
now the dbObjects package, which talks to the database.

What I intended when talking about an e-mail interface was, well,
there's this neat separation I think I have. I don't think I will ever
have a webserver that's reachable by a fixed IP address, but I will
have an account that can be reacht 24/7 by email. So if the requests to
the backend are done by email, then it's possible to have distributed
application that works without a web-server, or even a fixed tcp-ip
link.

But first I want to be able to actually tag sentences, words and
morphemes for useful information!

>
> tal., who needs a holiday from this Now All-New! University -> Sunnydale
> High nightmare before madness ensues... </minirant>
>
Well, could you take a look at the current code, especially for
the back-end? I'd appreciate any criticism, as this is my first
large Python project, and I'm not too sure of myself.

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://denden.conlang.org/~bsarempt