[Zope] Something odd about ZCatalog...

[Michel Pelletier]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Bernstein [mailto:mbernstein@profitscape.net]
> Sent: Monday, September 13, 1999 2:12 PM
> To: Michel Pelletier
> Cc: zope@zope.org
> Subject: Re: [Zope] Something odd about ZCatalog...
> 
> Hmm, interesting. A controlled vocabulary (complete with 
> synonyms and stemming) would
> be a very interesting product. few (if any) automated 
> products exist for this in the
> web application space. I've been interested in controlled 
> vocabularies for a while
> now, ever since I read 'Information Architecture for the 
> World Wide Web' by  Louis
> Rosenfeld and Peter Morville. 
> (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565922824/)

What I would like to see is an intelligent 'stock' vocab object for
several languages.  We are still incepting this project, however, I
cannot make any delivery promises.  Stopping, stemming, and
understanding of international characters (excluding multi-byte, at
least at first) would be big pluses.

> However 
> I was disappointed at the time that all such vocabularies had 
> to be created
> and maintained by hand, even if you were using an existing 
> one (say from an online
> glossary), 

This is what I was thinking, what else did you have in mind?  Unless you
can teach a computer to read and understand context and applicability of
words, I don't see how it can be automated.  It might make sense to have
a user interface where the manager can 'ask' the catalog if a word will
be stopped or not, and be given the option to add or remove the question
from the catalog, ala:

Manager:  Is 'Many' a stop word?

Catalog:  Yes, would you like to remove Many as a stopword?

Manger:   Yes.  Is 'antidisestablishtarianism' a stopword?

Catalog:  No, would you like me to add it as a stopword?

Given this interactivity, it might be at least more useful than a flat
list of words you can edit.

> I've never had a client that would spring for 
> creating a vocabulary
> maintenance tool. ('why do we need that?').

That's reasuring.  Maybe since you understand how hard it is, *you* can
spring for it?  ;)
 
> With a controlled vocabulary for cataloging and retreiving 
> objects, and Topics to
> arange objects into arbitrary heirarchies, Zope could 
> credibly claim to have one of
> the most advanced Web Content Management Sytems on the market.

Wait, I thought it was allready?

-Michel