[sugar] New multilingual dictionary activity

Chris Ball cjb at laptop.org
Mon Mar 10 14:56:37 EDT 2008


Hi Jameson,

   > Many of the countries where the XO is/will be deployed have local
   > languages for which good free electronic dictionaries very much do
   > not exist. Moreover, even in places where the local language is
   > digital-age, creating a schoolwide jargon file would be a great
   > project for involving the kids.

Couldn't agree more, and I think I recall that an OLPC pilot school did
exactly this, creating a dictionary of their local language inside the
Write activity.

The "Words" dictionaries are currently modifiable in that they're
tab-separated text files that are parsed at runtime, but they should
become more modifiable.  I think the correct workflow would be:

   * Any dictionary entry can be clicked on and retyped, which causes
     a local modification.
   * It would be nice to have a review page showing all local changes
     made and providing a way to revert them.
   * The modified dictionary should be saved in the Journal.
   * The activity should pull all "dictionary" mime types out of the
     Journal at startup and use them, instead of its current behavior
     of using text files shipped with the activity.
   * Ben's "Distribute" activity would take care of shipping around
     dictionary files, although direct mesh sharing could too.

Thanks,

- Chris.
-- 
Chris Ball   <cjb at laptop.org>


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