A Dictionary Server Protocol
RFC 2229
Document | Type |
RFC - Informational
(October 1997; Errata)
Was draft-rfced-info-faith (individual)
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Last updated | 2013-03-02 | ||
Stream | Legacy | ||
Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized with errata bibtex | ||
Stream | Legacy state | (None) | |
Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
RFC Editor Note | (None) | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 2229 (Informational) | |
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | (None) | ||
Send notices to | (None) |
Network Working Group R. Faith Request for Comments: 2229 U. North Carolina, Chapel Hill Category: Informational B. Martin Miranda Productions October 1997 A Dictionary Server Protocol Status of this Memo This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1997). All Rights Reserved. Abstract The Dictionary Server Protocol (DICT) is a TCP transaction based query/response protocol that allows a client to access dictionary definitions from a set of natural language dictionary databases. Table of Contents 1. Introduction ......................................... 2 1.1. Requirements ......................................... 3 2. Protocol Overview .................................... 3 2.1. Link Level ........................................... 3 2.2. Lexical Tokens ....................................... 3 2.3. Commands ............................................. 4 2.4. Responses ............................................ 5 2.4.1. Status Responses ..................................... 5 2.4.2. General Status Responses ............................. 6 2.4.3. Text Responses ....................................... 6 3. Command and Response Details ......................... 7 3.1. Initial Connection ................................... 7 3.2. The DEFINE Command ................................... 9 3.3. The MATCH Command .................................... 10 3.4. A Note on Virtual Databases .......................... 12 3.5. The SHOW Command ..................................... 13 3.5.1. SHOW DB .............................................. 13 3.5.2. SHOW STRAT ........................................... 13 3.5.3. SHOW INFO ............................................ 14 3.5.4. SHOW SERVER .......................................... 14 3.6. The CLIENT Command ................................... 15 Faith & Martin Informational [Page 1] RFC 2229 A Dictionary Server Protocol October 1997 3.7. The STATUS Command ................................... 15 3.8. The HELP Command ..................................... 15 3.9. The QUIT Command ..................................... 16 3.10. The OPTION Command ................................... 16 3.10.1. OPTION MIME .......................................... 16 3.11. The AUTH Command ..................................... 18 3.12. The SASLAUTH Command ................................. 18 4. Command Pipelining ................................... 20 5. URL Specification .................................... 20 6. Extensions ........................................... 22 6.1. Experimental Command Syntax .......................... 22 6.2. Experimental Commands and Pipelining ................. 22 7. Summary of Response Codes ............................ 23 8. Sample Conversations ................................. 23 8.1. Sample 1 - HELP, DEFINE, and QUIT commands ........... 24 8.2. Sample 2 - SHOW commands, MATCH command .............. 25 8.3. Sample 3 - Server downtime ........................... 26 8.4. Sample 4 - Authentication ............................ 26 9. Security Considerations .............................. 26 10. References ........................................... 27 11. Acknowledgements ..................................... 29 12. Authors' Addresses ................................... 29 13. Full Copyright Statement ............................. 30 1. Introduction For many years, the Internet community has relied on the "webster" protocol for access to natural language definitions. The webster protocol supports access to a single dictionary and (optionally) to a single thesaurus. In recent years, the number of publicly available webster servers on the Internet has dramatically decreased. Fortunately, several freely-distributable dictionaries and lexicons have recently become available on the Internet. However, these freely-distributable databases are not accessible via a uniform interface, and are not accessible from a single site. They are often small and incomplete individually, but would collectively provide an interesting and useful database of English words. Examples include the Jargon file [JARGON], the WordNet database [WORDNET], MICRA'sShow full document text