[Tetum-translators] BlackDog-WhiteBoard

[Peter Gossner]

Hi guys.
Attached should be a dia format whiteboard of a revised approach
to the translator.
The idea is to chew twice and pass it on ... :)

The Design Objective is to capture as many errors as practicable before
processing. The main change is putting the spell checker in early and
whenever the user edits the document live.

The other is to identify unknown words from the source language, (i.e.
the spell checker does not know them ) and known words for which there
is no translation in the target language.

This should reduce errors and hits on the logic engines / dictionaries
underneath everything.
It does mean that we need to build comprehensive dictionaries  and
syntax "mappings).. but that just takes time and hopefully usage.

Procedurally the process goes in two major steps. 
(which may/will/can
loop) Step 1 contains process steps 0 -4. (enter the source doc to ask
for translation)
Step 2 may involve user interaction and essentially presents the user
with a translation they may edit in the target language. (or perhaps
return to the source language step .. not sure yet)
I imagine the entire doc is initially translated with tagged(and/ or
colour coded) half tone xml tags wrapped around"problem" words or
phrases. I would hope to have a right button popup menu to select single
words or a larger window for phrases ... not sure about the phrases
bit.. 

I have posted the dia with the engine room turned off select "view
=> layers" to play with that.

Other news is that I think we can have our own database(s) without too
much trouble..(and not lose too much speed).This should work for
standalone and local system wide services. May still use postgres for
Project wide stuff but more on that later.(as an active server thingy)
(security, speed and such)


now as for the learning environment I have only a conceptual scope on
this but I can see a couple of ways of tackling it:
1/ is embedding W3C cwm and N3 tools
2/ is building our own 
3/ most likely; rewriting the W3C stuff to suit us.

As for an editor I had a quick look at Abiword and that IS possible ...
though I will need to do some extra study as there is a fair bit of C++
there. The advantages are many though. Most flexible choice.

Then there is Gedit. Which should be simpler to implement and has built
in most things we need.

Another is to simply use the GTK2 text editor widget and implement our
own interfaces to Aspell etc. (probably smallest footprint and just as
functional as Gedit .. also leaves us free of update issues by other
projects) I will do some more homework on this but the demo i looked at
(with the developers tools) looks quite doable.

Finally at some stage I reckon this would mesh very well with emacs
xemacs and the MULE stuff (at least). However this involves most work
for our users. (though also eventually the most power.. hey of course)

By the way. Sylpheed (this mail app) has a good interface to spell
checking.. I think I have the source code for it stashed away somewhere
as well...

(though I hate the editor ...)

One last really important note on the editor / interface :
If we do this carefully it should be possible to produce plugins for Abi
and Gedit in any case.. It would probably just involve a separate pop up
window.. and would also (probably) use the tabs capacity of gedit and
another full editor window(view) for abiword...i.e. It is really
practical to keep the logic engines away from the default interface.
(a few buttons as possible in normal mode)


I will start a separate thread for a development plan and approaches..
and am keen to get more input. !

A "good Thing" about the version 0.0 approach is that it abstracts away
the logic algorithms as well :) (so we can freely play with them.)


Well hope this all makes some kind of sense.

Pete
-- 
Mesage Composed: Thu Mar 11 15:30:03 UTC 2004
Calendar events:
Mar 13  The Allman Brothers record their live album at the Fillmore
East, 1971 
Mar 13  "Striptease" introduced, Paris, 1894
< http://www.gnu.org/software/tetum/ >
< http://bigbutton.com.au/~gossner >
< address@hidden >

BlackDog-WhiteBoard-0.0.dia
Description: Binary data