advice needed on Lingua::Identification

[jac]

Hi, everybody.

I'm in need of advice here...

I'm putting together some things I have and creating a module named
Lingua::Identification. I won't go through details on why should this
module be created or anything else (unless someone asks me too) since
that has already been done (though not here, I know).

My problem is: the module has to retain some information about each
known language; this could easily be done by having persist on the
module itself... however, I also want the user to be able to *teach* a
new language to the module... how should I keep that information?

One possibility would be to force each known language to become a module
(Lingua:Identification::EN for English, etc)... the downside of this
solution is that once I have 50 languages, I'll have 51 modules... :-|
Still, CPAN can take care of things for us and install them all without
problem... but still, I'm not convinced... It is true that this would
allow the user to install only the desired languages and also ease the
learning process for new ones... besides, the module wouldn't have to
read unnecessary information on startup (there is the possibility of
identifying between only two languages, for example, so you don't need
to prepare all of them).

Another possibility is to have everything in a single file, and allow
the user to set up a configuration file himself, which may contain other
languages...

I don't know what's best... can you help me with this? Can you tell me
your opinion?

I've done quite a lot of programming in Perl, but I've never upload a
decent module on CPAN... I'm trying to do that for the first time, and I
don't want to screw things up right from the beginning...

Thanks to all of you.

Best regards,

jac

Re: advice needed on Lingua::Identification

[jac]

> I'd much prefer ::Identify.

I'm starting to agree with your idea :-)

jac

-- 
Jose' Alves de Castro

Re: advice needed on Lingua::Identification

[jac]

First of all, thanks for your opinion :-)

> If it's simple to remove the data for each language to a config and use identical 
> logic for all languages, that's usually the way to go.

The logic (at least initially) will be the same for each and every language.

> There's also a combination of the two. For example, perhaps it makes sense to 
> combine Latin based languages together.

I did implement the notion of language sets (the user is able to enable and disable 
languages to search within, but also to enable and disable sets of languages). The 
problem arises when a language is contained in more than one set; English, for one, 
would be in the 'European' set, in the 'European Community' set, and possibly in the 
'Most Common' set ;-)

If I were to store all the information of languages in a single file (user editable), 
where should I place it? :-| (considering I would want any user to be able to use it 
without the need of a local copy and that any user should be able to include his own 
languages) ... That would take two files, right? One for everyone and another one in 
each user's home directory...

Does the notion of 'home directory' arise a problem when it comes to other OS's? :-| I 
have only used Perl with Unix systems.

jac