[Lexicog] Issues regarding a free dictionary

[arun t]

Hello Bill,
  
  Thanx for ur suggestion. I agree VB is a crappy language. But for now,  I want my software to work in windows. If I get a good response then  perhaps I'll start to think cross platform. 
  
  But there is another thing: I plan to make the database portable. Here  is how that is going to work: I am going to somehow publish information  about how words are stored into the database so that people can create  applications that use the database. Presently I am kind of figuring  that out...what is a file format that is cross platform...a text file?  May be but I really don't have much awareness in this direction.
  
  Here is how I had imagined using a text files: it is similiar to how an  html browser works! You have the head word, definitions, etc enclosed  in tags. There are labels that are tags themselves. My program  interprets these tags, and finally displays the result.
  
  I haven't yet started developing the application yet. Right now I am  just gathering ideas... Of course the main issue still looms large:  what is going to happen if everyone would want to make a dictionary?

billposer at alum.mit.edu wrote:          
  Arun writes:
  
  >> I am only learning visual basic; but that is the
  >> platform I am thinking of developing it for now.
  
  I would advise against using Visual Basic. Leaving aside
  the fact that it arguably isn't a good programming language,
  if you use Visual Basic, your dictionary will run only
  on Microsoft Windows systems, which are by no means the only
  computers in the world. Furthermore, Microsoft itself has
  abandoned support for Visual Basic. I suggest something
  available cross-platform and with a future, e.g. Tcl/Tk or
  Python (with Tkinter or one of several other graphics packages).
  If you're really hard-core about object orientation a similar
  choice would be Ruby.
  
  If I don't mention it, I know somebody will suggest Perl.
  Yes, you could use it, but the code tends to be unreadable,
  so I don't recommend it.
  
  Bill
  
    
                  
        
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