SignWriting List Forum| Message 3362 | Previous | Next [ Up Thread ] | Message Index |
|
SignWriting List Forum |
|||
|
|
From:
"Angus B. Grieve-Smith" Date: Mon May 8, 2000 1:25 pm Subject: Re: SW in Databases | ||||||||||||||||
|
So here's a couple examples of flat databases: 1) Bill mentioned a comma-delimited file. This just involves separating the fields by comma. For example, here's a comma-delimited database of a few of the more active members of our list, along with their countries and the signed languages they work with most: Valerie,USA,ASL Stefan,Germany,DGS Mark,Japan,NS Wayne,USA,TSL I can even include graphics with this, just by providing a link. Suppose I had gif files with pictures of everyone, named valerie.gif, stefan.gif, mark.gif and wayne.gif. I could add the filenames to my database: Valerie,USA,ASL,valerie.gif Stefan,Germany,DGS,stefan.gif Mark,Japan,NS,mark.gif Wayne,USA,TSL,wayne.gif 2) Trevor mentioned using a subset of SGML. One example is HTML's "dictionary list" tags. Here's a tiny bilingual dictionary of French using these tags: <dl> <dt>chair <!-- stands for "dictionary term" --> <dd>chaise <!-- stands for "dictionary definition" --> <dt>cat <dd>chat <dt>sign language <dd>langue des signes </dl> This can be displayed in any web browser; yours may even display it. And you could replace the French definitions with HTML links to gif files of the signed language of your choice, for example. You've just dynamically published your database on the Web! In fact, there are many utilities that can convert a flat database from one format to another; it's fairly easy to write one in Perl. 3) Spreadsheet programs like Excel (mentioned by Valerie) and Lotus 1-2-3 (mentioned by Bill, I think?) can read in flat databases in comma- or tab-delimited formats and sort them in lots of nice ways. So can more powerful database programs like FileMaker Pro and Microsoft Access. Comma-delimited and tab-delimited formats are kind of hard for people to read, but they're easy for computers. I would warn against using a proprietary format like Access or FileMaker Pro, simply because those programs cost a lot of money and there are reasonable, free alternatives. Choosing one of the commercial packages would deliberately exclude a number of people. A simple subset of SGML is all that is needed, and it is possible to customize Access or FileMaker Pro to read that format. The problem is how to write a "dictionary dump" program of the kind described by Trevor: something that would extract the information from the binary file and output a comma-delimited or SGML list. From what I understand, that requires knowledge of Pascal and assembly language, but perhaps not. -- -Angus B. Grieve-Smith Linguistics Department University of New Mexico | ||||||||||||||||
|
|