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From: bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: xwebster
Message-ID: <37759@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 8 Sep 89 14:32:03 GMT
References: <4537@shlump.nac.dec.com> <8909071325.AA25395@fnord.umiacs.UMD.EDU>
Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci.
Lines: 27
In-reply-to: steve@UMIACS.UMD.EDU's message of 7 Sep 89 13:25:45 GMT


The story, which may be apocryphal, was that the way Webster's 7th got
on-line was that a bunch of people (possibly at MIT) split up the
pages and just began typing (the dictionary definitely began life on
PDP-10's.)

Maybe someone could figure out a way to legally designate a dictionary
(I dunno, call a publisher and offer to return the typed in version)
and everyone on the net can type in a few pages and collate. Or maybe
someone even has a good enough scanner tho that's non-trivial work
also, at best like trying to xerox the entire thing and more likely
requiring error-checking on each page (and all focused on one site.)

It could be an interesting experiment and might even be worth
continuing with other generally useful, free documents (I realize that
dictionaries etc are not free for this use, that's why someone has to
figure out what dictionary etc could be used legally.)

Something about a thousand monkeys and a thousand years comes to
mind...perhaps it can be called the KiloMonkey Project?
-- 
	-Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die, Purveyors to the Trade
1330 Beacon Street, Brookline, MA 02146, (617) 739-0202
Internet: bzs@skuld.std.com
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