I have set up two custom search engines using google.com/cse

One searches the J6 dictionary:
http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=016147560673599814097:rhtkeo7p3cy

The other searches the J7 dictionary:
http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=016147560673599814097:rk5jmigdjse

I have noticed that searches in the J7 dictionary do not reveal pages
which are duplicates of the J6 dictionary.  Furthermore, when I
perform generic google searches restricted to just these dictionaries,
my results are consistent with the behavior of the custom search
engines.  Some of the J7 pages are [currently] not available as google
search results.

And, to be fair to google, when mapping from content to url they have
to pick a single url to represent that content (otherwise they are
intensely vulnerable to irrelevant duplication).

But this suggests that if we want the J7 dictionary to be relevant to
people performing arbitrary searches we should cross link it with the
J6 dictionary.

In the general case, we cannot know what url google will decide.  Doe
noq, the J6 dictionary has more external links into it than the J7
dictionary.  But that could be a temporary situation.

There's also an issue of historical continuity - the current format of
the dictionary closely adheres to its original form, which did not
include any provisions for finding the same page in a different
version of the dictionary.  Perhaps the right way to address this
issue is to add some kind of javascript driven popup menu to the
page's markup, so that the cross-version links to the companion page
would not take up space when it's not in use?  But it might also be
possible to implement this using css.

Does this [adding a popup to let the reader select the dictionary
version] seem like a reasonable course of action?

Does it need deeper discussion of unresolved issues?

Thanks,

-- 
Raul
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