Re: Programmers requested for dictionary

On Fri, 27 Oct 2000, H. S. Teoh wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 27, 2000 at 09:03:54PM +0200, Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> [snip]
> > A more ambitious project, which Taliesin has mentioned already, is
> > Kura: Kura will be able to do most of what you want, and more. It can
> > already link between texts and lexicon, for instance. So you can click
> > on a word in the text and find its definition in the dictionary, _and_
> > see all lines where that word occurs in all texts in that language.
>
> Hey, where can I get a copy of Kura? I'd love to try it out :-P
At http://www.valdyas.org/linguistics/index.html and
http://www.valdyas.org:8000 for the server (it's running now, with some
Valdyan and Denden texts and lexica). However: it's a snapshot, and you
might experience a challenging install.

>
> [snip]
> > It's Linux only, for the moment: the gui needs KDE 1.1.2 (but I'm
> > converting to cross-platform Qt 2.2.1). You need an MySQL database. I
> > think it would be foolish to try and construct some multi-user data
> > storage by hand.
>
> Eeek! is there a version that isn't bound to a GUI? Sorry... I'm a CLI
> freak, and I loathe to install anything beyond bare X and the most minimal
> window manager (vtwm). OTOH, some programs I use require qt2.2, so that
Well, for basic data-entry, I feel a good gui can't be beaten (even if
Irina prefers lynx + CGI for her dictionary). But there is an
xml-import filter, and the webserver part is stand-alone. I'm not fool
enough to hard-glue a gui to a server (though I work at a company that
has done just that. Imagine: every app-admin has to VNC to the server
box to see whether the server is still up. Now I'm rewriting the server
that nonsense is over.).

> could work. At the moment, though, I don't have enough space on my /usr
> partition to install the KDE libraries.
Put them in /opt, then ;-).

>
> [snip]
> > >         - Ability to show words in "native" fonts (would probably have
> > > to wait for the gui).
> >
> > This is more difficult than you might think - and not only because X font
> > handling isn't as modern as you might like. But it is certainly doable, and
> > will be in Kura once the conversion to Unicode-aware Python 2 and Qt 2.2.1
> > is done.
>
> Hmm... If it were up to me, I'd go for Metafont/TeX because they allow the
> flexibility you need to deal with strange writing systems and conscripts.
> But I seriously doubt this is ever gonna happen... because I seriously
> doubt anybody here wants to bother to learn Metafont/TeX (except myself
> :-P), esp. if it's just for the sake of programming a conscript.
>
Metafont isn't really useful for presentation on a screen, at least not
dynamic presentation. Linux's console Unicode fonts are wonderfully
versatile, but not good enough for most uses. I'm trying out Unicode
approaches, but conscripts are more difficult still. You need either
force your readers to download your conscript font, or generate a page
that consists of thousands of small gifs, or generate a large gif
(+ html map) on the fly.


Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.valdyas.org