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Writing a dictionary software for a spoken language
bobby100:
Dear forum members,
I am a speaker of a language that will probably get extinct with my generation. It is a variation of Romanian language spoken in Serbia. It is a branch that didn't evolve together with Romanian for last 100 years. It diverges a lot from standard Romanian etc. etc. It is more like medieval Romanian.
I would like to get it written down, and here I seek for advices about making a proper software for such task.
One word could have the following attributes:
- descriptive writing of the word capable of showing accents, ligatures (underscore the letters), silent letters (striked through) etc.
- type (verb, adjective etc.) - finite group of options
- description - text of an unknown length
- usage examples - list of strings
- audio file(s) - links to files on HDD
- graphic/video file(s) - links to files on HDD
- synonym(s) - strings that can also be searched for in the database
- translation to other languages - should be possible to get it indexed per language, if a foreigner searches for translation
- grammar (this is a whole category of tables)
I understand that the databases are the best way to store data that can be quickly searched by an end-user, but this is where I fail.
I do know how to work with databases for some simple things, but I struggle here with unknown number of fields and unknown length of the fields.
For example, I can't predict how many synonyms will one word have, or how many examples will be there for one word, and also how much text will that be.
Could some, please, give me some hints how could I organize all this?
MarkMLl:
I can't speak for lesser databases, but my experience with PostgeSQL is that it is entirely happy with variable-length strings, is entirely happy with adding columns (e.g. with an initial nil value), entirely happy with attached binaries of modest size, and has good character support provided that you can set this for (at least) a table and (possibly- would have to check) the entire database.
If you started off with that and used it while you were massaging your storage and organisation into shape you could possibly later downgrade to e.g. SQLite.
Having said that, it would not surprise me at all if there were existing tools to do this... possibly proprietary to a particular university etc. but for something important like you're suggesting they might offer some /very/ attractive deals.
MarkMLl
Aruna:
This may be useful
BrunoK:
Go sqlite3 to start.
bobby100:
I'll take a look at the existing programs, but all I've found till now are made for English-speaking researchers that are researching foreign languages.
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