[sugar] New multilingual dictionary activity

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 7:56 PM, Chris Ball <cjb at laptop.org> wrote:
> Hi Jameson,
>
>    > Many of the countries where the XO is/will be deployed have local
>    > languages for which good free electronic dictionaries very much do
>    > not exist. Moreover, even in places where the local language is
>    > digital-age, creating a schoolwide jargon file would be a great
>    > project for involving the kids.
>
>  Couldn't agree more, and I think I recall that an OLPC pilot school did
>  exactly this, creating a dictionary of their local language inside the
>  Write activity.
>
>  The "Words" dictionaries are currently modifiable in that they're
>  tab-separated text files that are parsed at runtime, but they should
>  become more modifiable.  I think the correct workflow would be:
>
>    * Any dictionary entry can be clicked on and retyped, which causes
>      a local modification.
>    * It would be nice to have a review page showing all local changes
>      made and providing a way to revert them.
>    * The modified dictionary should be saved in the Journal.
>    * The activity should pull all "dictionary" mime types out of the
>      Journal at startup and use them, instead of its current behavior
>      of using text files shipped with the activity.
>    * Ben's "Distribute" activity would take care of shipping around
>      dictionary files, although direct mesh sharing could too.

And what if the activity could open another entry from the journal
(using the object chooser) and offer some tool for merging onto the
current one?

Tomeu