[sword-devel] dictionary user content

[Matthew Talbert]

Hi all,

I have been working on a couple of projects and I would like to get some
feedback. First, following Ben's suggestion, I have been working on updating
Easton's dictionary with cross references and scripture references.
Connected to that, I have created a prototype application for creating and
editing dictionaries (and potentially other module types). It is called, for
the moment, Sword Writer. It is located at http://sword.chaqar.com/admin and
the test user is sword and password is sword1. It has several features so
far, including restricted access to the main editing interface, unrestricted
access to downloading the whole module, unrestricted access for posting
comments about individual entries.

Editing
Find and entry you would like to change. Click on it. You will see a
textarea called "Markdown text". This is psuedo-markdown language (psuedo
because nothing is implemented except links, and they're not html links). A
cross reference is marked like [Greek]($$$GREEK), and a scripture reference
like [Genesis 1:1](Gen 1:1). The text is in [], the link is in (). You can
see the resulting entry in "Encoded text". If you make a change to the
markdown text, just click "Save and continue" to see the updated changes to
the encoded text.

Downloading Module
You can download the module at any time by going to
http://sword.chaqar.com/EastonLinked/. I recommend using wget rather than
firefox for this. A sample script to download, convert to module, and move
to the correct directories follows (you will need to create the directories
and create the conf file):
#! /bin/sh
wget --output-document=EastonLinked.imp
http://sword.chaqar.com/dictionary/EastonLinked
imp2ld EastonLinked.imp EastonLinked z
mv -f EastonLinked.dat
~/.sword/modules/lexdict/zld/eastonlinked/EastonLinked.dat
mv -f EastonLinked.idx
~/.sword/modules/lexdict/zld/eastonlinked/EastonLinked.idx
mv -f EastonLinked.zdt
~/.sword/modules/lexdict/zld/eastonlinked/EastonLinked.zdt
mv -f EastonLinked.zdx
~/.sword/modules/lexdict/zld/eastonlinked/EastonLinked.zdx
You can get the conf settings under Dicts -> EastonLinked in the admin
interface.

Comments
You may add a comment without logging in by going to
http://sword.chaqar.com/dictionary/EastonLinked/[DICTIONARY KEY]/comment.
"Get" returns an html form. "Post" to the same url will post a comment.

Status
An entry may have different statuses: default, known errors, edited,
proofread once, proofread twice. When a comment is added to an entry, the
status changes to "known errors". The idea is that once the comment has been
looked at, the status will be changed to "edited", then the comment may be
proofread and marked proofread. Once it is proofread twice, it will be
assumed correct unless another comment is entered.

Vision
The vision is to allow non-programmers (and programmers) to collaborate and
help with editing and creating quality modules. In particular, my interest
is to create an English dictionary that will cover all words in a few modern
translations (say, ESV, NET, and NASB) complete with Scripture references
for each entry, as well as an encylopedia covering all proper nouns in the
same translations.

Implementation
Obviously, there is a lot of work to be done to the interface. The textareas
are too small, there is no validation, etc. An interface for just
proofreading would be nice as well. But the real hope is that some of the
frontends might take advantage of the API to allow reporting problems or
reporting that something has been proofread. For example, two buttons (one
for "report problem" and one for "this is correct") could be added to an
interface (perhaps optionally if someone wants to help) and everything could
be done from within the frontend. Even more awesome would be the ability to
update the module to the latest version from within the interface. It would
require either a. generating the module automatically on the server, or b. a
correctly set up sword system (not a problem on linux, but may not be easy
on windows). It would not be hard to generate automatically server-side, if
there was validation to ensure that the module could never exist in an
incorrect state. All of this is open for discussion, of course; just some
ideas.

Matthew

I'm on irc variously as ransom1982 or mwtalbert
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