The Coptic Dictionary Project

[Admin]

Aims:
1- Provide an web-based Coptic Dictionary
Feathures:
1- Editable by all members : Any member in the forum can (add new words / suggest correction for an existing word / etc ...)
2- Open : Any visitor (guest or member) can view the database and use its search functionality freely
3- Reliable : Because there is field where the member should (but not required to) enter the refernces [i.e. from where did he get this word and its meaning]
4- A Desktop application will be provided as an alternative to the web interface and to give more functionallity (like downloading the entire database and seacrh offline)
Details:
The dictionary will consist of a Big tables with the following fields
word -> where you can enter the coptic word
meaning -> the meaning of the word this field should be in English but you can use Arabic
origin -> where you can tell if it is Greek word or Coptic word
dialect -> Sahidic, Bohairic, Fayumic, Achmimmic, & sub-Achmimmic.
Pronounciation -> How the word WAS Pronounced (this field should be written in latin letters)
member -> the member who added this word. this allow us to know who provide accurate informations and who add words carelessly
other spellings -> any different spelling for the same word
refernces -> list of refernces that has this word ( dictionaries, lessons books, websites, .....)
comments -> Any comments for this word

waiting for your suggestions and comments
This project will not start before month form the date of this posting giving the time for everyone to say his opinion

[Admin]

I can see no body interested in the dictionary project
Well, I am afraid I can't do it alone
Yes, I am capable of doing the programming/web designing stuff
But my knowledge in Coptic still considered limited
After knowing more about Coptic i found thats making a dictionary is not as simple as i expected
I am not able to make a design for the dictionary

working in this project will be halted until I find someone who can help
or until I get enough knowledge to help myself

[Admin]

This link show you how a user will be able to add a word to the dictionary
http://danacbe.com/add.php
Hope some one will be a *bit* positive and give me feed back

[Admin]

ﻷ انتي مفهمتينيش
انا مش محتاج مساعدة في اضافة كلمات للقاموس
انا محتاج مساعدة في عمل القاموس نفسه
(عمل القاموس يعني تصميمه و ازاي الناس تضيف كلمات جديدة فيه و حاجات زي كدة)
و لما اخلص عمل القاموس ابقى اشوف مين ممكن يساعدني في اضافة كلمات جديدة

عموما شكرا على اهتمامك
انا عارف الجروب كويس
بس التعامل فيها بيبقى صعب شوية عشان الكلام بياخد وقت طويل على ما يتحط في الجروب
(The approval for the new posts takes long time)
عشان كدة كسلت اكتب عن القاموس هناك

شكرا مرة تانية على الرد - على الاقل حد عبرني

[emile]

A great idea u need to send it to all the groups. Do not give up.

[ragui]

انت خلاص هتعمله ولا محتاج مساعدة مننا؟
ربنا يبارك فالمشروع دة و بإذن يسوع ينجح

[sano]

مجهود رائع يا admin
بس أنا شايف أنك تخللي حد زي officer  يساعدك عشان الضغط عليك مايبقاش جامد وأنا هحاول أساعدك علي قد ما أقدر

[Admin]

المشكلة الحالية مش هي في الكتابة نفسها
المشكلة في طريقة تسجيل الكلمات و تصميم البرنامج اللي هيسجل فيها
متشغلش باللك بالموضوع ده دلوقتي على الاقل

[Admin]

for those who want free Coptic English dictionary
it can be downloaded from here http://www.coptic-nazareth.com/files%20downlad/coptdict.pdf

[copticray]

Hi Admin,
Are you still working on this project? I can deploy some cycles on it.
I looked at the form you made and it looks like a good start, I guess we need a virtual Coptic keyboard so that people can type Coptic easier and we need to work on the DB design,
mare `v] cmou enekhwb niben

[Admin]

I am not working in the dictionary this days
problem is that I still not able to imagine how the dictionary will be organized
for example if a word has two different spellings, will they have two independent entries ?
how about the words that have different forms for different dialects, how will they be entered/represented?
I can make an entry form that contains 100s of fields to cover all possibility (or maybe i can't?), but I don't think this will be very user friendly.

other questions also remains unanswered like, how editing/adding words will be managed?

[copticray]

May be the root of the entry would be the consonants of the word (like Crum's) and the entry would have the other forms of the word, like infinitive and stative. (e.g. cm would have cmow, cmamaat)
We can add a  search facility that would return the entry of cm when you search forcmamaat or font=ArialCoptic]cmow[/font].

For adding and editing, new members can be nominated by member to have privilege to do that given that they reference their source. Thus we will have the advantage of distributing the work among many people while keeping a decent level of accuracy.

[Admin]

Your ideas are great,
can you change the design of the "add" form to to reflect the new idea you are suggesting?
or if you don't know HTML, can you draw another "add" form design and post it
if you could do that, that will make the remaining tasks easy, a good designer is all of what is needed for the project to complete

[copticray]

I met a friend the other day who did a very similar program to that one, it should be a good start, I'm talking to another friend at MIT. We will try to make a team and finish this in the summer.

[Admin]

of course, I would like to participate in the team