dict.org / RFC229 dict protocol

A couple of times lately I've run across http://www.dict.org/ and the 
'dictionary server protocol' (DICT). It is TCP based, and seems to be 
getting some usage.  http://www.dict.org/rfc2229.txt

The page at http://www.dict.org/links.html links a number of client and 
server packages, and points to a (modest) number of live services. 

I wonder whether one of the DICT server packages, such as

	http://www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~duc/Java/JDictd/
	http://ktulu.com.ar/en/javadict.php (Java)

	http://www.miranda.org/~jkominek/jiten/ (Perl)
	http://melkor.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik/serpento/ (Python)
	http://www.caliban.org/ruby/ruby-dict.shtml (Ruby)

...could be used as basis for a Web service -based wrapper around
a SKOS SOAP service.

So a question for those of you hacking on the SKOS Web service
interfaces... do you think the SKOS API will allow for a superset of the 
functionality in the DICT protocol? 

Also, is DICT going to be _much_ faster through being TCP based? I
wonder if that matters, eg. if desktop clients will do multiple queries
per word using substring matching 'while you type', ...

Thoughts welcomed,

Dan

Received on Tuesday, 15 June 2004 07:05:42 UTC