Network Working Group C. Daboo Internet Draft: ACAP Personal Dictionary Cyrusoft International, Inc. Document: draft-ietf-acap-dict-00.txt March 1998 Expires: September, 1998 ACAP personal dictionary dataset class Status of this memo This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." To view the entire list of current Internet-Drafts, please check the "1id-abstracts.txt" listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), ftp.nordu.net (Northern Europe), ftp.nis.garr.it (Southern Europe), munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ftp.ietf.org (US East Coast), or ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast). Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested. This document will expire six months after publication. Distribution of this draft is unlimited. Abstract The Application Configuration Access Protocol [ACAP] is designed to support remote storage and access of common application option, configuration and preference information. Its main benefits are in providing a way for users to gain access to personal information from any computer at a location supporting an internet connection, by keeping this information stored centrally on a server. Additionally, it allows 'kiosk' style use of computers so that users do not need to store data locally on a shared or public workstation or network computer. This specification defines a standard dataset class for personal dictionaries that would allow users to keep one or more 'user dictionaries' stored on an ACAP server for access by any ACAP-aware application that requires such information, for example any application that uses a spell checker. Daboo [Page 1]
Internet DRAFT ACAP Personal Dictionary Dat set March 1998 0. Outstanding ABNF for entries. Examples. 1. Introduction Various types of dataset have been designed to operate with ACAP [ACAP]. Among these are options [REF] and addressbooks [REF], allowing storage of personal options or preferences, and personal addressbooks. This specification defines the 'dictionary' dataset class to be used for storing personal dictionary information, for use, for example, with spelling checkers. Currently many different desktop applications support different spellchecker modules, most requiring their own main and user-defined dictionaries. The dictionary dataset in ACAP is designed to address the problem of having to maintain separate user dictionaries for a variety of applications on a single computer, as well as on different computers. The aim of the dictionary dataset in ACAP is to ensure that a user's personal dictionary is always synchronized across applications and computers. ACAP-aware spellcheckers can make use of this capability by storing and accessing their user-defined dictionaries through ACAP. This dataset is not meant to be used for the main dictionary (which is usually large) that is normally provided with a spell checker, but merely for the few hundred or thousand words a user may add as they use the spell checker. Additionally, this draft does not describe the spellchecking process itself. That will always be left to the local client implementation. One aim of this draft is to go further than conventional spellcheckers by allowing additional information about words to be stored. This will take the form of a classic 'paper-based' dictionary which includes definitions of words, for example. This additional information is optional, but may be useful for grammar checkers or other programs that require more details about a word. 2. Conventions Used in this Document The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels" [KEYWORDS]. 3. ACAP Personal Dictionaries 3.1. ACAP Personal Dictionary Dataset Prefix Datasets whose names begin with "/dictionary" are assumed to contain dictionary entries as defined in this specification. Daboo [Page 2]
Internet DRAFT ACAP Personal Dictionary Dataset March 1998 3.2. ACAP Dictionary Hierarchy Hierarchical dictionaries SHOULD be represented using ACAP hierarchy. Any entry in a dictionary can also be a hierarchy node by setting the "subdataset" attribute. 4. Recommended ACAP Attributes The following attributes MAY be used in an ACAP dictionary entry. A dictionary entry MUST have an "entry" attribute and a "lang" attribute. Beyond this rule, clients MAY choose any subset of the basic attributes described below, as well as using registered private attributes. Clients are encouraged to provide a way to view all textual attributes in an entry regardless of whether the client knows the special semantics associated with them. The ABNF defines the content of the attribute values prior to their encoding as an ACAP string. Clients MUST conform to the syntax when generating these attributes, but MUST NOT assume that the attribute values will conform to this syntax on access. Servers MUST NOT enforce the syntax. Unless otherwise stated, all attributes in this specification are single-valued and textual. 4.1. Basic Attributes These attributes are defined in ACAP [ACAP] and have meaning in all dataset classes. This section describes how they are used in an dictionary dataset. entry The word, or title of a subdictionary. This attribute MUST be present in the dataset entry. lang IANA registered language tag. The language tag is used to identify which language this word is used in. It is used to allow multi-lingual dictionaries. This attribute MUST be present in the dataset entry. definition Definition of word (may be multivalued). This provides an entry for the classic 'paper-based' dictionary definition of the word. grammar Grammatical context (noun, verb, adjective etc - may be multivalued). This attribute should be kept synchronized with the 'definition' attribute so that there is exactly one value for each corresponding value in the 'definition' attribute. Daboo [Page 3]
Internet DRAFT ACAP Personal Dictionary Dataset March 1998 pronunciation.human Human pronunciation using some defined phonetic description. This must be related to the language tag in use. pronunciation.machine Machine pronunciation using some defined phonetic description. This must be related to the language tag in use. This attribute provides a way for computer based "text-to-speech" processing engines to determine the correct pronunciation of a word. synonyms ACAP urls to other words that are synonyms of this word (may be multivalued), or words that are synonyms of this word and don't have an entry in this dataset (e.g. they are in the main dictionary and reside on the client machine). homonyms ACAP urls to other words that are homonyms of this word (may be multivalued), or words that are synonyms of this word and don't have an entry in this dataset (e.g. they are in the main dictionary and reside on the client machine). capitalize value: true/false - indicates whether the word should always appear with the first letter capitalized. real name value: true/false - indicates that the word represents a real name. subdataset Indicates a sub-dictionary exists. If set, the 'entry' attribute corresponds to the name of the sub-dictionary. plural The plural form of the word. expand Expansion of the entry if it is an abbreviation or acronym. 5. References [ACAP] Newman, C., Myers, J. G., "Application Configuration Access Protocol", RFC2244. [KEYWORDS] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. Daboo [Page 4]
Internet DRAFT ACAP Personal Dictionary Dataset March 1998 6. Author's Addresses Cyrus Daboo Cyrusoft International, Inc. Suite 780 The Design Center 5001 Baum Blvd. Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA. <mailto:daboo@cyrusoft.com> Expires: September, 1998. Daboo [Page 5]
