Re: Directory for dictionary databases
On Mon, 27 Apr 1998, Bob Hilliard wrote:
> In earlier discussions, it was agreed that the proper location
> for dictionary databases under the FHS would be
> /usr/share/dict/<pkgname>.
>
> Subsequently, I have obtained a copy of the FHS, and have
> discussed this subject with the upstream author of the dictd package.
>
> An abbreviated extract from the FHS follows is appended to this
> message.
>
> It appears that the FHS considers the /usr/share/dict directory
> to be for word lists, such as those used for spell checkers, not for
> dictionaries in the wider sense.
>
> Rik Faith <faith@cs.unc.edu>, the author of dictd, says:
>
> After reviewing the FHS, I agree with Rik, and will build the
> dictionary packages that I expect to upload tomorrow to install in
> /usr/share/dictd.
>
> I suggest that you consider /usr/share/wordnet for your packages.
...
> 4.8 /usr/share : Architecture-independent data
>
> /usr/share -- Architecture-independent data
> |
> +-dict Word lists
> . . . . .
>
> Any program or package which contains or requires data that doesn't need
> to be modified should store that data in /usr/share (or
> /usr/local/share, if installed locally). It is recommended that a
> subdirectory be used in /usr/share for this purpose.
>
> . . . . .
> 4.8.1 /usr/share/dict : Word lists
>
> Recommended files for /usr/share/dict:
>
> { words }
>
> Traditionally this directory contains only the English words file, which
> is used by look(1) and various spelling programs.
> . . . . .
> Word lists for other languages may be added using the English name for
> that language, e.g., /usr/share/dict/french
> . . . . .
>
> Other word lists, such as the web2 "dictionary" should be included here,
> if present.
>
> BEGIN RATIONALE
>
> The reason that only word lists are located here is that they are the
> only files common to all spell checkers.
>
> END RATIONALE
OK, that seems to be a good reason to store only spell check related
data in /usr/share/dict.
But in my opinion it is a bad solution if every "translation related"
data should be stored in different directories. I think a directory
structure should be as logical as possible. Im not familiar with
FHS and havn't enough time to learn about it. But in my opinion it
is necessary to store data together if they have the same purpose.
I would suppose to store translation related data in
/usr/share/lang
or
/usr/share/trans [-lation]
or
/usr/share/lingua
or may be
/usr/share/lingua-mono AND
/usr/share/lingua-bi (lingua-multi)
The latter case means to store monolingual databases like wordnet and
dict in lingua-mono and bilingual databases (I plan to maintain a
English-German dictionary) in lingua-bi. (We should think about
the Euro-wordnet project which is multilingual.)
Supporting this hierarchie wie can store in this directory single
file dictionaries and in a subdirectory if there are more files like
in the case of wordnet.
I think if we don't do that we will end up in so many directories in
/usr/share after some years that it would be horror. Think of NLS
and such stuff. There will be more and more needs for dictionaries
and we should do it right from the beginning.
Please foreward this to the FHS team because I'm not able to involve
in this theme.
Just my two cents
Andreas.
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