Hi Joy, Yee hah ! Ok, lets get the ball rolling, to address your issues and some more...
1. Timeline OK, I'm no good at timelines, but I'd say 1 month to write/find the code to run the dictionary page and to debug it. I have a leetle idea of cgi scripts, I could read up (this is busy season here at the lab now, so no promises) about cgi and write the code to generate the pages, if there are java experts/php experts out there who could do the thing _now_ all the better. Volunteers ! 2. Format/storage We should plan on one "central" fromat from which we could quickly convert to others. I would say 90% of the job is to agree on a standard. I would propose XML. I have little knowledge of the details, but I assume this is the best for structured data (like this dic), that needs to be available cross platform which at a pinch needs to be human readable. so I would propose the basic word unit to be as: <word bangla="..."> <bangla pronounciation="..."> <bangla meaning="..."> <bangla synonym="..."> <bangla synonym="..."> .... <bangla note="..."> (this may be etymology etc. etc.) <english translation="..."> <english pronounciation=".."> <english meaning="..."> <english synonym="..."> <english synonym="..."> .... <english note="..."> </word> So the primary key would be bangla, but we'd be able to do a reverse dic by generating an XML file ordered with the <english translation="..."> field to make a english->bangla dict, We could have several XML files each corresponding to one bangla letter, but memory and processing power is cheap nowadays... Anyone who's conversant with XML, is this valid ? Additions, subtractions, possible pitfalls ? 3. Fonts/ webpage/ website We should generate the pages in unicode, and have a link to Sayamindu's font - in case the user hasn't got a otf yet that supports bangla So we'd have the main interface simply as translate ________ [go] synonyms _________ [go] look for ________ [go] [browse dictionary] [contribute] translate will look for correspondence in the XML file for a bangla/english word and display all the gory details in all the fields synonyms will go through the "synonyms" field and return the list of synonyms along with their full "translate" data (for each) look for will go through the "meaning" field and return words that contain this keyword in the "meaning' field [browse] will act like a paper dictionary, you'll have a clickable alphabar which'll take you to the respective pages [contribute] will take you to a page that'll present a new bangla word and you have to fill up the fields as best you can. This will then go into the dictionary. 4. CD Yes, basically the same code that runs the website could be bundled along with the database of words, all the user then needs is a browser with unicode/otf support. We could also write a small app to be a standalone dict. The first option would be quicker, less buggy and more cross platform The second would free the user from having to hunt down something that profides true otf/unciode support Lets do both... 5. OpenOffice Yes, I'm not conversant with their format, but XML is good... -kaushik -- To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body "unsubscribe ilug-cal" and an empty subject line. FAQ: http://www.ilug-cal.org/help/faq_list.html
