Resumen de DicoPro: an online dictionary consultation tool for language professionals

Susan Armstrong, Colin Brace, Dominique Petitpierre, Gilbert Robert, Derek Walker

• The DicoPro project addressed the need for a uniform, platform-independent interface for accessing multiple dictionaries and other lexical resources via the Internet/intranets. Based on HTML and Java, the client software is designed to shield the enduser - typically language professionals (writers and translators) as well as those in the educational sector - from storage and file format concerns. The DicoPro server is a robust cross-platform Java program which gives the user access to multiple dictionaries via the Internet. In order to handle data coming from multiple sources, a powerful transformation tool (XMLTrans) was developed for conversion, validation and indexing of the dictionary data. The multilingual dictionaries currently available are professional, commercial-grade reference works, licensed for testing purposes within the DicoPro project from several prominent European publishers.