Re: German Dictionary (fwd)

[Bob Hilliard <hilliard@flinet.com>]

Andreas Tille <tille@physik.uni-halle.de> writes:


> > It would be cool it the database could be converted into the dict
> > format (where clients etc. are available), but dict is only one way,
> > so the database had to be duplicated to also do lookups the other way.

> That's right.  The best way would be if Xstreak would use dict.
> Than we would have to support only one database.

     If Xstreak is a front end to the steak program, like wordinspect
is a front end to dict, you would have to have steak packaged for dict
first.

     (I'm confused.  Is it steak or streak, and is that the name for
the database of for the script (or binary) that accesses the
dictionary?)

     Look at man dictd(8), DATABASE FORMAT for some information about
the Dict Protocol.

     Is the steak dictionary a set of simple word for word pairs
(i.e. strasse, street) or is it more complex?  I am not familiar with
the inner workings, but dict supports multiple headwords for one
definition.  A simple example:

bob:vc-p1:bob>dict Aaronic
1 definition found

>From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [webster]:

  Aaronic \Aa*ron"ic\ ([asl]*r[o^]n"[i^]k), Aaronical
  \Aa*ron"ic*al\ (-[i^]*kal), a.
     Pertaining to Aaron, the first high priest of the Jews.
bob:vc-p1:bob> 
bob:vc-p1:bob>dict Aaronical
1 definition found

>From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [webster]:

  Aaronic \Aa*ron"ic\ ([asl]*r[o^]n"[i^]k), Aaronical
  \Aa*ron"ic*al\ (-[i^]*kal), a.
     Pertaining to Aaron, the first high priest of the Jews.

     If steak was a set of simple word pairs, it would suffice to mark
the both German and English words as headwords, and set the pair as
the definition.  If there was more explanatory text in each language,
this simplistic approach would have problems.  Most of the effort in
making a new dictionary work with dict is in the formatting software.
Usually the code for dict (client) or dictd (server) isn't touched at
all.

Bob
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