[kde-edu]: KVocTrain import filter in the LingoTeach project

[Marcus von Appen]

On, Sun Apr 24, 2005, Peter Hedlund wrote:
> > Maybe the creation of a common vocabulary standard for language
> > teaching/learning projects is of interest for anyone here, so that a
> > general specification could be created, which guarantees
> > interoperability for such a kind of data files and projects.
> 
> Yes, this has been discussed several times before. The problem is of
> course as usual that someone actually has to do it.
> 
> What do you feel is missing in the kvtml-specification?

Various things, which are also missing in the specification, LingoTeach
uses. That makes those both (and others, too) less flexible and
extensible. I will try to give some examples:

* Time formats like present, perfect, etc. are not covered by both in a
  extensible manner. Different languages can have different time cases,
  which should be supported in some way.
* Transcriptional support is missing. That can make learning specific
  languages pretty complicated, especially, if they use non-latin
  glyphs (e.g. Kanji or Russian) or in which one word can have different
  context-sensitive meanings.
* Lack of a phonetic spelling support and alternative encodings
  (e.g. Pinjin codes).

Those are only some examples, which come into my mind. There are many
other issues, those specifications currently do not support to make them
a full featured language teaching/learning definition.

Another thing is that user dependant statistics should not go into the
general specification and lesson files. They should go into a user
dependant file instead.

> > Comments and feedback are welcome.
> 
> The usual I guess: why start a new project when there are several around 
> already. Especially if you are interested in interoperability and the reuse 
> of existing vocabulary data.

Because all use different approaches, better and worse ones. Each one
might have its benefit for the specific application, but an
interchangeable format would lower the time to create new lessons for a
specific application. All could use the same pool and people would not be
forced to use different applications for the same issue.
Instead they would be able to use their favourite application for their
favourite need (read: the features of the common specification the
application supports).

Regards
Marcus