A verb conjugator in C (was: Ideas for an open source project in C)

Question

Hi,
I have to write a relatively complex program in C for my university programming course. We can either use a given topic (a hotel management software - quite some work, but not very challenging) or something of our own choice provided it is not too simple.
Being a good open source citizen, I want to do something from which other people might profit.
My first thought was a xmms2 client after an idea I had for a long time, but that's no fun without objects, particularly because xmms2 uses boost as well. I'm not sadistic enough to do this. (I like object orientated programming...:()
We can use external libraries (e.g. ncurses, GTK2), but should use ansi C (that's C89) and it should run on Windows as well, but I might talk my way out of these two things if necessary.
I'll do a lot of brainstorming myself, but I would appreciate it a lot if you could give me ideas. It would be a pity to waste this opportunity with a useless hotel management software if I could create something usefull instead.
Thanks a lot for any ideas.
kind regards
Last edited by wuischke (2007-12-27 11:54:57)

Answer 1

I'm still not very familiar with the Italian conjugation, but judging from Spanish it's a pretty simple thing to do, at least when you only think about outputting all the conjugated forms for an infinitive. I'll make an example with Spanish, but it's almost the same for Italian:
procedure:
Step 1: Check for suffix -ar/-er/-ir and the root of the verb and apply the default rules as defined in the data file. (i.e. suffixes -o,-as,-a,-amos,-áis,-an for -ar and present and so on)
Step 2: Check the data file for an entry for this verb and replace any irregular forms. (This means replacing all forms for a irregular verb or maybe only the participle - imho the most efficient way while still KISS)
Example: comer
Step 1: suffix -er, root com; use rules in data file for -er
Step 2: verb is not in database, regular
Example: escribir
Step 1: suffix -ir, root escrib; use rules for -ir
Step 2: verb is in database, only exception to regular conjugation is the particible "escrito"
Example: ir
Step 1: suffix -ir, no root; apply rules for -er (Doesn't make sense, but it is irregular anyway)
Step 2: verb is in database, about everything is replaced
Recognizing the forms, i.e. doing a reverse search is a bit harder this way, but actually really interesting.
ibendiben: I like the idea, but I wouldn't realize this in C, but a follow-up project written in PHP is very well possible. I'll have the data files and algorithms already, so it's not too much work.
But I wanted to do some work on the aMule skin code as well or we might actually release 2.2.0 before I'm finished...
Edit: I think I'll use a webfrontend (I'll worry about windows later...): http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/syste … -nweb.html
Last edited by wuischke (2007-12-27 11:56:14)