Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!gatech!bloom-beacon!mcgill-vision!opus!bajan
From: bajan@opus.cs.mcgill.ca (Alan Emtage)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NeXT Database Prowess
Keywords: indexing digital librarian
Message-ID: <1445@opus.cs.mcgill.ca>
Date: 21 Aug 89 17:30:17 GMT
References: <19350@vax5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU> <2211@hub.UUCP>
Reply-To: bajan@opus.UUCP (Alan Emtage)
Organization: SOCS, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Lines: 30

Just as a comment: Is it just me, or do more people out there think that
there could have been a more logical way for NeXT to have bundled the
various databases it maintains? Granted, a dictionary is a special kind
of database (the keys are generally obvious), but why have the quotations
in a separate application from the Shakespeare (which is effectively the
complete collection of quotes of The Bard ) ? 

Couldn't we benefit from the techniques used by the Webster application?
I sent a message to NeXT asking for any documentation on the internal
structure of the Webster database and got a (very nice) reply saying in 
effect that this was "private" to Webster. My reaction was one of mild
amusement since, as far as I'm concerned it's naive to think that this
information won't soon be available (if it isn't already).
As a side project, I was thinking of doing something similar to Webster,
but using the KJV of the Bible as the text, as an academic exercise. Thus
you could include some of the more well known works of art with a
religious theme as the ``pictures'' (I like art history).

This isn't a flame (well, not really), just a suggestion that the various
databases could have been put together in a more effective way.


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