Re:[kidsgames] word familiarity

[Steve Baker <sjbaker1@airmail.net>]

Paul inadvertantly took this discussion offline - so here is my reply
to his last post on this thread:

Paul Kienzle wrote:
>
> >The (kindof) answer to that is to have one person read the *entire*
> >dictionary (just the root words at least) into a BIG sound file -
> >and have people who want to contribute to the database cut out the
> >word they want from that big file (or set of 26 big files).  I
> >wonder how long it would take to read the dictionary like that?
> >20,000 words - two seconds each?  Eleven hours.  I guess that's
> >do-able if you have enough disk space.  One person could do it in
> >a couple of weeks at one or two hours a night.
> >
> >Oh - but wait.  20,000 words is only the start of it.  My dictionary
> >has "JUMP" - but not "JUMPED", "JUMPING" or "JUMPS".
> >
> ><sigh>
>
> You really do not want to paste word tokens together to synthesize
> sentences.  The prosody will be totally wrong, and the result will
> be hopelessly unintelligible.  A bad synthesizer will do as well.

Yes - you are right - but I'm just trying to get across the point that
the idea of storing the sound of the word being spoken in the word
list database really imposes a need for one person to have read all
of the words.  Having words read by (say) a hundred different people
would make those recorded sounds almost unusable.

> Furthermore, flashing up the picture and then reading the word does
> not make for a very exciting game.

I didn't say it did - we aren't talking here about the end application,
but just about the nature of the database and how we go about building
it.

>  It's better if you mix things up a
> little bit.  For lletters, I recorded sentences like "T is for train;
> tiger starts with T; that's a pretty angel fish."  And I'm in good
> company.  We have a very compact version of Dr. Suess's ABC's wherein
> each page has the form "Big X, little X, what begins with X? ...",
> which I found too tedious to read to my son --- not at all like the
> rest of Dr. Suess.  Then I chanced upon an original full-sized version,
> and it was so much better.  Here, he breaks up the monotony by changing
> the structure of the verse on some of the pages.  I really don't see
> how a database can capture this sort of creativity.

Nope - me either.

> It still seems to me that the structure of the database should follow
> from the demands of the games that are going to be using it.

Yes - but we are preparing the database for a set of applications that
have not even been thought of yet.

Suppose someone wrote a crossword puzzle generator.  That would benefit
from a list of words - but the dictionary definitions that are in the
database are no use as clues.  You'd have to invent your own 'cryptic'
definition of each word.  It would be cool if that was in the database,
but since hardly any other programs would benefit from the cryptic
clue, it's unlikely to make it into the database.

>  Here are
> my pet examples.  Can you add others?

Yes - lots - but the 'stickers' application already added TWO more
data entries for each word in the dictionary.  A transparent-edged
"brush" version of the picture - and a loopable sound track.
 
I can't see all those features making it into the word list - which
is already hard - and perhaps impossible - to produce.
 
If every application needs a couple of extra data fields for stuff
like this then the database will end up being pretty useless.

-- 
Steve Baker                  http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
sjbaker1@airmail.net (home)  http://www.woodsoup.org/~sbaker
sjbaker@hti.com      (work)
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