Request regarding inputs

[Ben Bullock]

Is it possible for the web site to be set up to remember people? Every time I go to the edrdg pages, I have to type in my name and email again and again. Surely it should be a simple task to remember a user via a cookie? Also it would be useful to have a way to access the things I've submitted to the dictionary in one page. It says that the email address will be used for followup queries, but I've never received one of these emails, the discussions seem to go on in the comments of the entry itself. So if I want to go and check what happened to my inputs I have to search through the pages of submissions.

[Jim Breen]

Hi Ben,

> Is it possible for the web site to be set up to remember people? Every time I go to the edrdg pages, I have to type in my name and email again and again. Surely it should be a simple task to remember a user via a cookie?

Can certainly put in on the list of possible extras. I must say that
these days browsers tend to handle that sort of thing for you. I find
with Firefox it will often pop up common values for a field when I
start typing.

> Also it would be useful to have a way to access the things I've submitted to the dictionary in one page. It says that the email address will be used for follow-up queries, but I've never received one of these emails, the discussions seem to go on in the comments of the entry itself.

That's more-or-less there via the options at the foot of the Advanced
Search page in that you can get a list of all entries where a
particular person has commented/submitted in a particular time range.
It can be in a tab by itself and be refreshed. I use it when I'm
"monitoring".

Again, a thought for a possible future upgrade.

Re emails, I use the address when I want to give some individual
feedback, etc. We've never gone down the path of having the system
send automatic emails - it can be a problem on a number of fronts and
after 14 years of operation without it, the need is obviously not
pressing.

Thanks

Jim

On Thu, 15 Feb 2024 at 14:36, Ben Bullock <benkasmi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Is it possible for the web site to be set up to remember people? Every time I go to the edrdg pages, I have to type in my name and email again and again. Surely it should be a simple task to remember a user via a cookie? Also it would be useful to have a way to access the things I've submitted to the dictionary in one page. It says that the email address will be used for followup queries, but I've never received one of these emails, the discussions seem to go on in the comments of the entry itself. So if I want to go and check what happened to my inputs I have to search through the pages of submissions.
>

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--
Jim Breen
Adjunct Snr Research Fellow, Japanese Studies Centre, Monash University
http://www.jimbreen.org/
http://nihongo.monash.edu/

[Chris Vasselli]

Hi Jim, Ben,

For what it’s worth, as a “casual” contributor to JMdict, I also would love to have the features Ben mentioned. In general, the current system is pretty hard to use. I would probably contribute a lot more if it were easier (especially emails when someone follows up or your edit is accepted) and I’m sure it’s a big barrier to entry for new contributors.

I wonder, has there ever been a discussion of moving the entire project to a platform like GitHub, rather than using a custom-made system? They have solved a lot of the same problems, so after migrating you would benefit from all of the work that they have done making collaboration and public contribution like this easy. I think storing JMdict as a set of XML files on GitHub that people can create pull requests to modify would be a pretty natural fit. KanjiVG is a good example of a project that operates this way. 

Of course, I also understand that the current system has worked for a long time, and the high barrier to entry might also have some benefits. Just throwing it out there.

Chris 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/edict-jmdict/CABHGxq7rSss4L%2BJvtSW_Hf3H9DAsfih%3DZ5g2CuH%2BPoar%3D0mP_Q%40mail.gmail.com.

[Chase Colburn]

Hi,

Just for a variety of opinions, I'll throw in my thoughts. I actually think the system Jim has created works well enough. I don't think having separate files for each of the 200k+ entries will be easier to manage. Although I love Github, I don't think this project is a good fit for it. That being said, if the editor site code itself was on github, perhaps we could contribute and submit pull requests for these kinds of features ourselves. 

Regardless, I'm always thankful for the work put into this epic project. 

-Chase

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/edict-jmdict/9a70d3ed-55b8-451e-ac5f-d89e610f1c80%40Spark.

[Chris Vasselli]

Yeah, you might be right about GitHub. Either way, I would also would happily help contribute to developing features for the editor site if the code were put on GitHub. 

And likewise, I'm hugely thankful to Jim and the team for all their hard work on this project!

Chris

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/edict-jmdict/CABrBoGSB%3Dr0OoaETrgYKhOQgit3hh335bg8Aaead-HTpECoRJg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jim Breen]

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. I need to say upfront that the dictionary database system was developed by Stuart McGraw. There had been a lot of experimenting with various approaches in the early 2000s, but Staurt's system, with its very flexible and powerful "JEL" entry language was a major initiative and suited the project very well indeed.

Sure, it's not simple to use, but then lexicography is a complex process. I think it strikes a very good balance.

There's a 10yo paper describing it at http://www.edrdg.org/~jwb/2013asialexJMdictDB.pdf

Stuart's system uses GitLab. There are some links worth following from the foot of the database pages.

Cheers

Jim

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/edict-jmdict/CABrBoGSB%3Dr0OoaETrgYKhOQgit3hh335bg8Aaead-HTpECoRJg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Ben Bullock]

Smple "contributor" user accounts, or at least the ability to remember people's email address and name so it doesn't have to be typed in each time, would be an improvement in my opinion, if someone has the time to implement it. I don't use "fill in the form fields automatically" suggestions on web browsers, since I don't think it's safe to have the browser remember and then fill in my name, credit card, address and phone number. 

[Ben Bullock]

On Thu, 22 Feb 2024 at 14:00, Ben Bullock <benkasmi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Smple "contributor" user accounts, or at least the ability to remember people's email address and name so it doesn't have to be typed in each time, would be an improvement in my opinion,

I've added this to the "issues" section here:

https://gitlab.com/yamagoya/jmdictdb/-/issues/258

[Stephen Kraus]

At the bottom of the "customize" page on WWWJDIC, there are text boxes you can fill to set your default name and email address. It sets a cookie with the information when you click the "customize" button at the bottom. I'm not sure if it still works ever since the JMdictDB URL was modified to the jmwsgi path.

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[Ben Bullock]

On Thu, 29 Feb 2024 at 16:01, Stephen Kraus <stephen...@gmail.com> wrote:

At the bottom of the "customize" page on WWWJDIC, there are text boxes you can fill to set your default name and email address. It sets a cookie with the information when you click the "customize" button at the bottom. I'm not sure if it still works ever since the JMdictDB URL was modified to the jmwsgi path.

Unfortunately it didn't work when I tried it just now. 

[Stuart McGraw]

I'm not sure how hard it will be to share cookies between Jim's wwwjdic pages and the jmdictdb pages. When I get a chance to work on it I'll take a look and if it is easy will do so. But if not, I'll add a cookie for the just jmdictdb pages which should help with the immediate issue and add the shared cookie idea to the to-do list; it would be nice if they were shared but there are too many other higher priority issues to spend a lot of effort on this one at the moment, if that sounds ok?

-- Stuart

PS, sorry it's taken so long to respond here but my system disk died last week and my backups are optimized for small space, not fast restores, so it's been taking a while to get everything back.


On 2/29/24 00:53, Ben Bullock wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Feb 2024 at 16:01, Stephen Kraus <stephen...@gmail.com <mailto:stephen...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> At the bottom of the "customize" page on WWWJDIC <https://www.edrdg.org/cgi-bin/wwwjdic/wwwjdic?19B>, there are text boxes you can fill to set your default name and email address. It sets a cookie with the information when you click the "customize" button at the bottom. I'm not sure if it still works ever since the JMdictDB URL was modified to the jmwsgi path.

>
>
> Unfortunately it didn't work when I tried it just now.

> before.pngafter.png

[Ben Bullock]

On Fri, 1 Mar 2024 at 02:31, Stuart McGraw <smcg...@outlook.com> wrote:

I'm not sure how hard it will be to share cookies between Jim's wwwjdic pages and the jmdictdb pages. 

The WWWJDIC cookie code sets the path to the top level using path=/, so the cookie is already useable across the whole of the edrdg.org domain. The dictionary database server is receiving the cookie with each web request. The following screenshot shows the display of the "Dev Tools" in the Chrome web browser for the top page of the dictionary server, https://www.edrdg.org/jmwsgi/edform.py?svc=jmdict&c=1. Here I have highlighted where the cookie with the key wwwjdicparm was sent with the request:

[Stuart McGraw]

On 2/29/24 22:52, Ben Bullock wrote:

> On Fri, 1 Mar 2024 at 02:31, Stuart McGraw <smcg...@outlook.com <mailto:smcg...@outlook.com>> wrote:
> I'm not sure how hard it will be to share cookies between Jim's wwwjdic pages and the jmdictdb pages.
>

> The WWWJDIC cookie code sets the path to the top level using path=/, so the cookie is already useable across the whole of the edrdg.org <http://edrdg.org> domain. The dictionary database server is receiving the cookie with each web request. The following screenshot shows the display of the "Dev Tools" in the Chrome web browser for the top page of the dictionary server, https://www.edrdg.org/jmwsgi/edform.py?svc=jmdict&c=1 <https://www.edrdg.org/jmwsgi/edform.py?svc=jmdict&c=1>. Here I have highlighted where the cookie with the key wwwjdicparm was sent with the request:
>
> [image: wwjdicparm.png]

[Stuart McGraw]

[Sorry about the previous premature send]

Very helpful information, thank you.

If the wwwjdic cookie is already set when a jmdictdb page is generated, I think the jmdictdb page can extract the name and email address easily enough. Going the other way -- a user filling out a jmdictdb form's name and email when no wwwjdict cookie is set -- would ideally set the same cookie. That will allow the entered name/address to be propagated to the wwwjdict pages. But I'll need input from Jim regarding what is needed or not needed regarding the other fields in the cookie and it will also require future coordination should the format change. Alternatively, there could be a second jmdictdb-only cookie used when a wwwjdic cookie is not available but this would mean no propagation to wwwjdic pages.

-- Stuart

On 2/29/24 22:52, Ben Bullock wrote:

> On Fri, 1 Mar 2024 at 02:31, Stuart McGraw <smcg...@outlook.com <mailto:smcg...@outlook.com>> wrote:
> I'm not sure how hard it will be to share cookies between Jim's wwwjdic pages and the jmdictdb pages.
>

> The WWWJDIC cookie code sets the path to the top level using path=/, so the cookie is already useable across the whole of the edrdg.org <http://edrdg.org> domain. The dictionary database server is receiving the cookie with each web request. The following screenshot shows the display of the "Dev Tools" in the Chrome web browser for the top page of the dictionary server, https://www.edrdg.org/jmwsgi/edform.py?svc=jmdict&c=1 <https://www.edrdg.org/jmwsgi/edform.py?svc=jmdict&c=1>. Here I have highlighted where the cookie with the key wwwjdicparm was sent with the request:
>
> [image: wwjdicparm.png]

[Jim Breen]

Very interesting discussion on cookies. I hadn't realised that the
wwwjdic cookie is available to the whole domain.

The wwwjdic cookie itself is rather out-of-date. The name and email
address is no longer used since the old new-entry/edit feature was
replaced back in 2010 with a link to jmdictdb, and all the options for
disabling the links are no longer relevant since I replaced them with
the drop-down [Links] menu some years back. I won't fiddle with it
now, and the name/address parts certainly could be picked up by the
jmdictdb code if that's useful.

The cookie is set by the page at:
https://www.edrdg.org/cgi-bin/wwwjdic/wwwjdic?19B

Jim

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[Stuart McGraw]

In that case (that wwwjdic makes no use of the name/email info), would it make sense to just remove the name and email boxes from the wwwjdict preferences form? Then the jmdictdb cookie wouldn't need to be compatible and as a minor benefit would not need to implement the no underscores restriction or worry about preserving other wwwjdic preferences.

-- Stuart