Duali Plans

["elzubeir at arabeyes dot org" <elzubeir at arabeyes dot org>]

Salam,

I guess it's time for me to let everyone know what my plans are for Duali.
After some testing (never enough, but thanks to all you guys who
volunteered it and those who were coerced into it ;), I have decided that
it is time to start moving to the C++ implementation.

There is a catch though. I will initially use parts of the ICU library.
More specifically, I will be using the regex module of the ICU. I will also
be using libdb4 (www.sleepycat.com). Those are dependencies that I would
rather not tag along. So, both dependencies will be temporary.

There will be a few releases in Python (mostly fine-tunings of the existent
version), but no major enhancements in interface (e.g. will not add options
to add words to dictionary or suggest words, etc.).

What you can expect from the C++ implementation (initial release plan) will
be as follows:

1. Ability to spellcheck (most known Arabic encodings)
2. Interactive interface (similar to that of aspell/ispell)-- ie. can 
   change words, fix them, etc. as they are found.
3. Ability to add an auxilary dictionary for your own custom words.
4. API to plug-in to 3rd party applications (text editors, word processors,
   etc.)

There will not be the ability to suggest words until I drop the libdb4
dependency for my own custom data structure (which is mostly there).

So, when? I cannot tell. I could give you a date. June 20, 2003. However,
this largely depends on my time (which is the most unstable thing in my
life right now). 

If you are interested in helping out with Duali's C++ port, please do let
me know (via the 'developer' list, no private emails please). The Python
code will serve as a good guide as to how I plan to continue work on the
project. After all, the whole point of the Python version was to be an
equivalent of pseudo code that actually executes ;)

If you have comments/suggestions/gripes, now is the time to make them!

Thanks.
Mohammed Elzubeir

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