Laziness is a virtue in a programmer
When parsing a text it would be good to have some simple tools to help identify a word.
Word Attributes
As Latin is so regular it should be possible to create a kind of dictionary that would list words together with their attributes. By attributes I mean:
- case
- person
- declension
- conjugation
- number
- tense
- English equivalent (or German, French, etc.)
When several words having the same attributes have been entered a program would be able to search for common endings and suggest attributes for hitherto unknown words.
None of this requires that the program understand any Latin syntax, each word would be dealt with quite separately. This means that when it suggests attributes for a word that it might find several matches, it can just list them all. The user can then edit the attributes and add a translation.
The user interface for the prototype will have a text entry box for the new word accompanied by a button marked find. Under this will be a wide list box that will display the matches found, if any. Below the list box is a pair of list boxes, the left shows the available attributes for a word, the right the attributes of the selected match. The user can use the list as a starting point for the attrbutes of the new word. A text box
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