Re: on-line dictionaries/thesaurus

Tim Berners-Lee (timbl)
Wed, 19 Aug 92 19:41:46 GMT+0100

There are dictionary servers running, but the polite thing
to do is to limit their use to your own site. There is a pd
client and server system (not w3 compatible unfortunately
but I am sure very easily hackable) for the NeXT. Every NeXT
comes with Webster's and Roget's thesaurus. We could make
the dictionary of some NeXT available to teh CERN site
but it would be less than nice tomake it available worldwide.
(We can make a W3 server which only allows .cern.ch connections).

Good summer student project for a few days/weeks.

There is a public WAIS server for an early out of coipyright
Roget's thesaurus. Find it under "Reference" in the subject list
or www http://info.cern.ch:8001/wais.cic.net:210/roget-thesaurus

The copyright situation for online stuff is not well defined as far
as I know. You could trythe El;ectronic Frontier Foundation's
archives or their personel for leads .. theat is their speciality
(law of the electronic information revolution).

J-P and I spent a few seconds on the problem, but did not have
much time.

The Roget's thesaurus on that server (at CICnet) by hte way
is provided from teh Gutenberg project collection of out-of-copyright
littereature.

Tim

Anyone else on the list know of a dictionary server on the web?

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Date: Fri, 14 Aug 92 16:48:18 SET
From: Judy Richards <JUDY@crnvma.cern.ch>
Subject: on-line dictionaries/thesaurus
To: Tim <timbl@nxoc01.cern.ch>

I understand that a month or two back you discussed this with Jean-Pol
Matheys and got hold of some software but it didn't work properly.

My question is more general - do you know of any software, commercial or
not, that would allow us to put a 'dictionaty server' in the computer
centre? I find it hard to imagine that you could get something completely
for free without breaking some sort of copyright law - at least the
dictionaries themselves must be protected in some way. How much do you know
about this subject, and how should one set about finding out more? Any
leads would be appreciated!