RE: [kidsgames] word familiarity

[jwaddell@ix.netcom.com]

Hi Brian and Carrie

I hope this gets to you somehow, as your cbthomp address has been
bouncing...


On Fri, 29 Oct 1999, Brian & Carrie Thompson wrote:

-->Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 15:44:09 -0400
-->From: Brian & Carrie Thompson <cbthomp@earthlink.net>
-->To: Kidsgames <kidsgames@smluc.org>, Chris Ellec <info@linuxforkids.com>
-->Subject: RE: [kidsgames] word familiarity
-->
-->Is someone working on the yawl package?

Yes, but only VERY slowly.


-->  I will start doing what I can.  I
-->just would like to know what it's going to be used for and if I should group
-->things the way that I mentioned earlier?

I REALLY want to get this into some type of database format, so I can do
SQL queries against it... I don't know if Postgres or MySQL is the best
choice.  There are several reasons for having in a database, including but
not limited to associating multiple pieces of data together that relate to
the word.  This is the database schema I propose at the moment.  I know
that it is long and I would not necessarily expect all data to be filled
out on a given word at the same time.  Please chime in with what data we
"don't really need" and the data I've completely not thought of....

language flag: EN (for yawl, other langauges would use their languages
standard coding ES for spanish as an example)

word: 128 characters (are there any words longer than this? should it be
shorter or longer?)

filename (url instead maybe?) of a sound file containing the word
pronounced.  Perhaps several more of these to include alternate
pronunciations and/or male/female voices.

filename (url?) of picture file containing (If the word is prone to it)
a picture of the object the name names, or the action the word
describes.... Perhaps as with the sound files, multiples of these to
house multiple pictures that this word represents.

definition: of the word in english (ala dictionary)

room for say 15 alternate definitions:

Pronunciation guide: (ala dictionary), is the dicitionaries method of
marking sounds with letters copyrighted?)

Age at which word would be expected to be recognized for reading
[so a story book game can query the database for age appropriate words]

Age at which word would be expected to be recognized for spelling (i.e.
writing) [so a boggle/hangman/writing a story/wordfind game can query the
database for age appropriate words]

Age at which word would be expected to be recognized verbally
[so a sound game (perhaps saying words pulled directly from the files
pointed too in this database we are creating) can query age appropriate
words]

Age at which word would be expected to be spoken properly (properly being
as indicated by the pronunciation guide)
[so a game that requires the pupil to speak their answers (perhaps a
picture is shown... and they respond...) can query age appropriate words]

Age at which word would be expected to be associated to something (object
or action...)
[so a matching game can be created with age appropriate words]

--> Word familiarity, as in dictionary 
-->or thesaurus or spelling or ....?
-->

ummm, well, yes.  All of them is my goal....

-->Brian Thompson
-->
-->> -----Original Message-----
-->> From: owner-kidsgames@smluc.org [mailto:owner-kidsgames@smluc.org]On
-->> Behalf Of Chris Ellec
-->> Sent: Friday, October 15, 1999 11:47 PM
-->> To: kidsgames@smluc.org
-->> Subject: Re:[kidsgames] word familiarity
-->>
-->>
-->> > I had better luck getting it here
-->> > http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/libs/yawl-0.1.tar.gz
-->> >
-->> > Dennis
-->> >
-->>
-->> I got the package. It's 2.6M after untar, and the readme claims 258,000
-->> words....
-->>
-->> How do we handle this ?
-->>

Apparently with a great deal of work :)  I hope my desires above don't add
too much too it to make it unbearable,  I really believe we need that
level of flexibility that having this information in database format will
give us, not to mention how easy it will be to ADD new data, or change
what is there, if we choose the database approach.

Sincerely,

Jeff

{ps I'm taking these in sequential order [or at least however it is pine 
is showing them to me...] so I apologize if I'm tramping in
areas already well traveled.....)



-
kidgames@smluc.org  -- To get off this list send "unsubscribe" in the
body of a message to majordomo@smluc.org