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

[Kevin Donnelly <kevin dotmon com>]

On Friday 19 December 2003 12:12 pm, neil shadrach bt com wrote:
> The starting point for any project has to be a vocabulary of a high
> standard. I think that means one produced by linguistic professionals.
> An amateur collection can only be of very limited use.
> Once this is available people can port it to their favourite piece of
> software or develop an application with their favourite tools. Users
> can then decide which is the most useful for their own situation
> ( online/offline, windows/unix/linux/mac etc ).

Precisely.  The point is that this material HAS been produced, and at public 
expense, but is not currently available in a form which IS portable.  I'm 
just trying to get some of the dots joined up by, in Aurfa, presenting one 
way in which this might be done.  (By the way, I was a linguistic 
professional in an earlier life ...)

> Some time ago I wrote ( for my own sad entertainment ) a cgi script
> to do stuff like conjugate verbs, deal with mutations, validate words etc.
> I covered all the verbs in "Y Llyfr Berfau" ( but didn't copy them ),
> added in subsets of available online Welsh/English lists like Mark Nodine's
> and used scripts to create lists of Welsh words from a few web sites.
> It was based on perl/mysql but I could just as easily have generated
> XML or other formats from it.

Being reduced to such sadnesses myself occasionally, I'd be interested in 
seeing this, if you still have it around.

> I stopped bothering with it because I realised that the final product
> would be of little value unless it was based on a good source.
> I'm sorry if it sounds negative but unless a dictionary is academically
> sound I just can't see the point in it however good the software.

Not negative at all - I think most people would agree.  The thing is that to 
date the amateur efforts have been the only ones that are accessible in 
anything like the format required.  This in itself says something about the 
problem.

-- 

Best wishes

Kevin Donnelly

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

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