Ahh, but Gerard, the words have the same origins, even if you spell them differently.
So Sass will spell it "greutens", and AS will spell it "groytens", but they both have the same origin, and the same translations.
Mark
On 01/09/05, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Heiko Evermann wrote:
Hi Gerard,
The duplication of words that are spelled the same in different dialects or orthographies is inherent in the database design. This is essential if you want to have definitions and etymology in these dialects or orthographies. If you are willing to accept that definitions and etymology can be spelled in orthographies other than Sass there could be a solution but as the nds.wikipedia also has to standardise on Sass, I think this is a rather unlikely scenario.
Definition and etymology would be the same. Your approach would be a duplication of efforts. It would be sufficient to allow one entry to belong to several orthographis, as in 1:n instead of 1:1. So this is not inherent in the database design. It is the design bug that I complain about for some time. 1:n would allow us to enter the data the way we think appropriate. And it still leaves us the opportunity to add individual entries when other users really think that explanations must also be duplicated along the orthographies (which I really doubt). So they can, if they want to, but they are not forced.
Kind regards,
Heiko
Hoi, As you want your definitions and etymology in Sass, these defintions are not the same as the ones in an other orthography. It is therefore not a duplication of efforts, it is the consequence of things in Sass. You cannot both insist on Sass and have it apply for other orthographies or dialects as well. You CAN state that words written the same way or in a different way mean the same thing and if people have selected Sass as an orthography they are interested in, they may see that it has an etymology or a definition.
I am interested in who your "we" is. I did recently discuss this design in a four hour session with language engineers, I discussed the German / Dutch / English - American / Lower Saxon languages and they agreed with me that this design allows for other purposes than just lexicon lookup. I have discussed the design with many people and so far the only "we" who asks for "this" is you.
What you call a design bug is in actual fact a design feature. One point that you are missing is that the meaning of a word spelled the same between dialects may be different. This is exactly one reason why this duplication is needed. The same is true for etymology; when a word is used for a first time in THAT orthography or dialect may be different as well, it may arrive from another dialect and not from another language..
Thanks, GerardM _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l