On Fri, 25 Oct 2002, Andrew Ho wrote:
> > I just want to add that the WordNet database is really great and everybody
> > who is interested in doing lingustic stuff should definitely have a very
> > deep look at it!
>
> Andreas,
> Thanks for the reference!
> Are you speaking of the WordNet at http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~wn/
> ?
Yes.
Sorry, I forgot the URL because it was so common to me ...
> It does not seem to have the "word muncher" tool that we have been talking
> about (i.e. something that will take any text file and extract unique
> words).
I think I read something about it but I do not really know where and when.
> Also, it does not offer web-enabled tools. I also don't see a long list of
> contributors/editors to its various sections.
There are several tools to access the WordNet database via web. I did
not yet investigate deeply, but there is a CGI script, some Jave based tool
and others.
> Perhaps we can make use of what it already contains and build better tools
> to populate / maintain it?
If I would have found a *really* good web tool I would have packaged it
for Debian. ;-) Well, WordNet is a great database and the tools to
this database are not bad. In my opinion we could definitely use and
enhance this stuff.
> What do you mean by "original source"? Do you mean source code for the
> maintenance tools or the data in the database file?
The database file which is used by the WordNet browser which can be
compiled from the archive source is a precompiled text database.
You can not change the length of an entry in this database (for instance
to fix a spelling bug). You have to fix the bug in the human readable
source of the database and process it by a tool named grind. There
are some technical issues to solve here. For a more detailed explanation
see
http://bugs.debian.org/137882
> Can you give some examples of how you have used it? (Any usage in the
> medical context?)
I do not use it in a medical context because I normally do not read
medical texts. I use it in every day live for translation purpose
because in many cases a thesaurus is better for translation than a
dictionary.
I guess there is much medical stuff included because I found very detailed
descriptions for other very special fields. Just check some stuff of your
daily work. Generally it works great but it might become better if we
would investigate some work in it.
Kind regards
Andreas.
