Linking from WWWJDIC

[Jim Breen <jimbreen@*********>]

Scott, in a comment when submitting the new マニ車 entry, said:

> By the way, I think that the following message is not necessary and
> could be replaced by a direct link. Most other operations
> (new entry/amending an entry already part of edict) directly link to the
>  new submission page anyway.

* You have selected the following as the basis for a possible new entry:
* マニ車 [？] /prayer (Mani) wheel/
* The JMdict/EDICT dictionary is now being maintained in the JMdictDB
* online database system. To enter this entry in the database for editing,
* please click here.

I quite agree that that (interim) page should be phased out, but I'm
not sure of the best way to do it, and any advice would be welcome.

At present WWWJDIC can link straight into the edit page for existing
entries because the sequence number of the entry is embedded in
the HTML for each entry display. In a bit of Javascript I can extract
that number, plug it into the URL of a call to the database edit
page and jump to it.

For something that isn't actually in the EDICT file (i.e. it's in
one of the other many files) there's no sequence number available.
The only way I can see to do it is to embed the complete entry
text as a variable. I am loath to to that as it would significantly
increase the number of characters in the page.

At present I get around it by also storing the byte offset of the
entry, and by going to an interim page I can retrieve the entry.

What do people think:

- is it worth adding quite a lot of data (which will not be visible)
to the pages just to simplofy the occasional promotion of an
entry into JMdict/EDICT?

- is there simpler way of doing it that I have overlooked?

Cheers

Jim

-- 
Jim Breen
Adjunct Snr Research Fellow, Clayton School of IT, Monash University
Treasurer: Hawthorn Rowing Club, Japanese Studies Centre
Graduate student: Language Technology Group, University of Melbourne