Re: Lojban program and conlang software ideas

> From: Peter Clark
> o Dictionary program - something where the user could type in the word and
> the translation, and the program would insert generate a Conlang<->Natlang
> dictionary. It would definitely have to handle multiple meanings; grabbing
> an example from Russian, if I type in "jazyk" for the Russian word and
> "tongue" and "language" for the English definitions, I should be able to
> find "jazyk" under both "tongue" and "language" in the English section. It
> should also work the other way as well; if I type in "probovat'" and later
> "starat'sja", I should find both under "try." It should also be able to
> indicate special forms, like "djen'gi" becoming "djenjeg" in the genitive
> plural.
>         Plus, it should have an Export To HTML feature, for that web page
> that I keep meaning to create... :)
I took a stab at developing one of these some time back to help manage the
expanding vocabulary of amman iar.  I found that simple polysemy was only a
small part of the problem.  Many words in amman iar (most?) have no simple
one-word english gloss.  I had to be able to enter one or more sentences to
properly define them.  This made generating an amman iar/english dictionary
trivial, but how to parse the english definitions to get an english/amman
iar equivalent defeated me and I've been programming for 35 years.

David