202689 - set up database-driven glossary for mozilla.org terms

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(www.mozilla.org :: General, defect)

Description

[fantasai]

Summary says all: set up database-driven glossary for mozilla.org terms

I'll post a spec as an attachment.

Advantages of this:
  - easily add terms
  - can index major documents related to the terms (e.g. CSS spec for "CSS")
  - sophisticated search, as opposed to "scan jargon file and hope it's there"

Comment 1

[fantasai]

Attachment: spec

This is ultimately what I'd like to have. The second pass is a bit complicated,

though, so if you want to just implement the first pass, that's fine. It should

be sufficient for most searches.

http://www.mozilla.org/docs/jargon.html is a good place to pull test data from.

Comment 2

[fantasai]

eh, sorry about the double spacing

btw, I forgot to mention, please feel free to ignore specifics if you think you
can do better. For example, you don't have to use the table layout I suggested
if there's another one you prefer. :)

Comment 3

[Anne (:annevk)]

fantasai, is there any preferred scripting language? (Is PHP ok?) I also wonder
if it is useful to have this complicated search mechanism. Most terms will
probably be linked from other documents as in: 'glossary?term=HTML' and other
terms are most likely an exact match (if we lowercase the term and search word
first).

If we use a little mod_rewrite, we could have 'glossary/MathML' as well
('glossary/mathml' would redirect), but I'm not sure how useful that would be.
Do you have any plans for a index file? Where should the admin be? Just a part
from the 'glossary' file? As in 'glossary?admin' for example?

Comment 4

[fantasai]

I prefer Perl because I know Perl, but if Myk says PHP is ok on mozilla.org,
it's fine with me.

If you want to start with a simpler search mechanism, that's fine. However, make
sure that it's easily expandable to handle what I've specced.

Given the partial-search capabilities, browsing items is simply a matter of
creating some predefined search links.

Admin can be handled by an appropriate submit button value, e.g.
glossary?action=admin or whatever. A flat query string must be interpreted as a
search request, as specified.

If the back end starts out as a text file, which might be a good idea, then we
don't need to code an administrator interface until we decide to switch to a
real database. (If the code is organized well, changing back ends won't be a
major problem.) I'm thinking the best way to handle this is to design it so that
it expands to match the spec without a rewrite, but start simple: just
term+definition for the data and just a case-insensitive string match for the
searching part.

Comment 5

[Daniel Wang]

FYI, a working place is just set up:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.phtml?title=Commonly_Used_Words#Other_Jargons .
Add your jargon and definition here.

Comment 6

[David Boswell]

There is currently a glossary of terms maintained as a wiki page on MDC at

http://developer.mozilla.org/en/Glossary

Closing as fixed.  If that glossary does not resolve this bug, feel free to reopen and change the product to Mozilla Developer Center product for more discussion.