[Xerte] Re: Dictionary Web Service

[Fred Riley]

> I looked at it and could parse the page easily enough, I'm just not
> sure it's quite what I'm after: the Glossary I have in mind is not
> quite the same thing as a dictionary. In the past I've made Glossaries
> for pieces of courseware, and the problem is they are all separate / in
> different formats etc. One *big* glossary that all things could call on
> might be really useful.

Yes, I can see that, though I reckon you'll not be able to find one. Essentially, a glossary is a stripped-down dictionary, so that you purely get the definition, not grammatical or entomological or usage stuff. Unfortunately, there's not much call for something so stripped-down for general vocabulary so you'll be lucky to find a 'glossary of everything' I reckon. There are glossaries for specific subjects (eg Jargon dictionary, Glossary of linguistic terms, Economics glossary) but they often don't exist in machine-readable form. 

I'll have a further hunt as it's an intriguing problem. It might be worth getting in touch with someone in the language centre.

I understand your problem. E-learning resources that we've created often have glossary terms written by teachers, which runs into the problem of different teachers defining the same term differently, so a 'definitive' glossary would be useful.  But then, that's what a dictionary is supposed to be ;)

Fred