Re: [gnome-cy] Aurfa/Krowbar - a Welsh dictionary server

[Kevin Donnelly <kevin dotmon com>]

On Friday 19 December 2003 2:11 am, Dafydd Harries wrote:
> Ar Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 10:24:20PM +0000, ysgrifennodd Kevin Donnelly:
> > > Well, Mark Nodine is the person you need to contact least of all,
> > > because he has given permission for the use of his dictionary.
> >
> > Not to me :-)
>
> His wordlist is available under the GPL, which should be sufficient
> unless you want to do something which is not covered by the licence.
> See http://www.hebffinia.com/geiriadur/.

Hmm.  Interesting.  I can find no reference to the GPL on the site which I 
presume is the proper one:
http://oldweb.cs.cf.ac.uk/fun/welsh/
Perhaps I am missing something.  The HTML downloads at:
http://oldweb.cs.cf.ac.uk/fun/welsh/LexiconForms.html
have "(C)opyright 2003 Mark H. Nodine" in them, but again no reference to the 
GPL.  So my comment stands.

> > Yes, I looked at the dict stuff (and I think the Welsh list is even in
> > Omnivore somewhere, back before I started noting the source).  But I
> > don't see the benefit of running a separate protocol when http can do the
> > job more easily.  A lot of the stuff is pretty cobwebby as well, which
> > suggests others have come to the same conclusion.  I haven't got around
> > to the aspell stuff yet.
>
> Regardless of whether the dict protocol is a good one or not, it's well
> established and well supported. For better or for worse, compatibility
> will often win over a superior design. Personally, if I were to design
> something to do the job that dict does, I'd probably implement something
> that sent XML over HTTP, but since dict already exists and has a large
> user base, it's folly to ignore it.
>
> No matter how little you or I like the protocol itself, it does its job.
> Unless I'm missing something and it doesn't meet something necessary for
> what you're trying to do.

It's not a matter of me liking it or not.  I'm sure it may be very helpful to 
some, but for my purposes http is as compatible as it gets, and the lack of a 
rejiggable database backend is limiting.  I agree that XML might be the way 
forward if you wanted to develop some sort of dictionary service thing (eg 
conjugate this verb in the present/future), but that's about as far as I'd go 
- the best container to hold data in is a database.

-- 

Best wishes

Kevin Donnelly

www.kyfieithu.co.uk - Meddalwedd Rydd yn Gymraeg

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