mjd@saul.cis.upenn.edu (Mark-Jason Dominus) (02/23/91)
We want to have a dictionary definition service like `webster'.
A user should be able to run a client program, specify a word, and
receive the definition of the word from the server. Our Webster server
ran on a NeXT machine and hasn't worked since we upgraded the OS.
Most prefereable would be source code for client and server
programs to run under BSD UNIX. (We would probably be running under
SunOS 4.1.) If no such program exists, we would settle for writing it
ourselves, but we would need an on-line dictionary for that, and good
dictionary databases seem to be hard to come by.
Can anyone point me either at complete software packages that do
what we want, or at possible sources of dictionary databases?
--
A man possessed is a poor commentator on his possession.
Mark-Jason Dominus mjd@central.cis.upenn.edu sahayman@porbeagle.cs.indiana.edu (Steve Hayman) (02/23/91)
>Our Webster server >ran on a NeXT machine and hasn't worked since we upgraded the OS. NeXT changed the database format humungously at 2.0, and I'm working on a new version of the webster server. I'll post a note to "comp.sys.next" when it's ready to go, which I hope will be very soon. (I have a bare-bones 2.0 version working now, that doesn't do spelling correction or thesaurus lookups, if anybody's desparate.) Steve -- Steve Hayman Workstation Manager Computer Science Department Indiana U. sahayman@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (812) 855-6984 NeXT Mail: sahayman@spurge.bloomington.in.us
rbe@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM (Robert Bernecky) (02/27/91)
You can obtain the New Oxford English Dictionary on ( I think) cdrom from the University of Waterloo. I recall it's in the neighborhood (neighbourhood if you speak Canajan) of 500e6 bytes. They also have an interactive searcher program called PAT (because it's based on Patricia (See Knuth, Vol. iii, Sorting and Searching), which goes like stink! Fairly pricey. I don't have an email address for them, but you can call the "centre for the new OED" at the University in Waterloo, Ontario. Bob Bernecky Snake Island Research Inc.