Using the Transcript Dictionary in MC

[Richard Gaskin]

Wilhelm Sanke wrote:

> Richard (Richard Gaskin <ambassador at fourthworld.com>) wrote on  Sun, 07
> Sep 2003:
>  
>> Jeanne's docs are wonderful, but rely on a backscript library to run.  Since
>> the MC IDE will be open source and the Rev docs are governed by copyright, I
>> don't think it would be wise to bank on including the revDocs library nor
>> the Transcript Dictionary itself in the MC IDE.
>> 
> I am not familiar with the specifics of copyright, but as you propose to
> use the Transcript Dictionary anyway (see below in your post)  it seems
> to be an issue how the Rev team would support - or at least tolerate -
> the idea to make the Dictionary accessible from within the  Metacard IDE

In order to use the latest engine we need to have Rev installed anyway.
Opening the Rev docs without modification in another copy of the engine
keeps Rev's overhead for supporting the MC IDE at zero and obviates
questions raised by modifying and/or redistributing it.

If the Rev folks want to lend a hand that would be great, but for the moment
I've been focusing on solutions that keep them from incurring any additional
costs.

...
> My approach was somewhat different:
> 
> In my post of Aug 27th I had described first steps to use the Transcript
> Dictionary with Metacard. In the meantime I have added more steps and
> now have a version of the Dictionary that can be opened from an item
> "Transcript Dictionary" in the "Help" menu of the Metacard Menu Bar.
> 
> If the Rev team abstains from complicating further the "entanglement" of
> the Rev Documentation (meaning for example to shift the scripts and
> objects needed in the Dictionary from several remote stacks to other
> remote stacks etc.) the routine to prepare the Transcript Dictionary for
> use with the Metacard IDE  would not take too much time when an updated
> version would have to be newly integrated.
> 
> I will not go into details here (again: see my post of August 27th);
> the most important step is to put the scripts of the RevDocsLibrary from
> stack "revdocs" into the frontscript of the Transcript Dictionary - via
> the preopenstack handler.

If that script is self-contained (no dependencies on other Rev scripts) then
bringing it into use might be an option.  Good thought.
 
> Open questions:
> 
> - If we want to use btn "Switch View" for the simplified reference,
> stack "revquickreference" must be included as a substack
> 
> - If we want to access the "Glossary" - from the yellow highlighted
> portions of the text - stack "revglossary" has to be included, too.
> 
> That would mean another 400 K for both stacks.
> 
> - Do we need the possibility to search the Dictionary in addition to the
> "Find" field?
> 
> We could use here a modified version of my "Topsearch" stack (see Rev
> User Contributions), but I am not necessarily keen on using my own
> product here, there are probably other similar tools available from list
> members.

For myself I'm only interested in the Dictionary.
What do the rest of you think?  How much of the Rev docs would be useful to
access in the MC IDE?
 
> Another option would be to take the card "Transcript Language
> Dictionary" from the "revdocs" stack, modify it for use independent of
> the revdocs stack and use this product of Jeanne de Voto along with the
> Dictionary (I tried it, it works.).
> 
> The modified Transcript Dictionary stack for use within the Metacard IDE
> (version 2.5.1B3)  - and the modified Metacard Menu Bar - is available
> here, tested so far on Windows.

I'm against modification as I would prefer to avoid redistributing
copyrighted works with this open source distribution.  If the modification
could be an automated process then no such disatribution would happen,
however, so maybe that would be an option.

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
 Developer of WebMerge: Publish any database on any Web site
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 Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com
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