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== Welcome to Leximo

Leximo (http://leximo.org) is a quest to create the world's first Multilingual Semantic
Social Dictionary”. Leximo invites users to submit words in every spoken language of the world.
Since each word can be submitted by multiple users, definitions can vary widely in quality and 
thus other users can rank these definitions, so that the most popular definitions appear first.

== Introduction

Today's print dictionary is poised for transformation in this internet era. If we are given the
choice of asking a native speaker the meaning of a word, and asking a scholar the same question,
chances are many of us will go for the native speaker. 

Our idea of what a dictionary is has not changed since Queen Elizabeth's reign. Online 
dictionaries right now are paper thrown up on a screen. They are flat. How many links are in the 
actual entry? Exactly!There's not a lot of 'clickiness'. 

Online dictionaries replicate almost all the problems of print, except for searchability. And
when you improve searchability, you actually take away the one advantage of print, which is 
serendipity. Serendipity is when you find things you weren't looking for because finding what
you are looking for is so damn difficult.

So, it's not that we have good words and bad words - we have dictionaries that are too small!
When people think about a place, and they don't find a place on the map, they think -- this map
sucks! When they find a word that's not in the dictionary, they think 'this must be a bad word'. 

Why?

It's more likely to be a BAD dictionary. Paper is the enemy of words, it is the form of an 8-track
tape, we must TRANSCEND PAPER. It is these artificial constraints, that lead to a skewd world view


We need to stop worrying about control, and more about description. The goal is NO LONGER to control
words. The goal is to collect words using the internet.

The internet is great for collecting words because it's full of collectors. The internet is 
made up of words and enthusiasm, the perfect recipe for lexicography.

The Dictionary is not just a book, it is a language. We can make The Dictionary not just a symbol for a
language, but THE WHOLE LANGUAGE if we get a bigger pan.

Print dictionaries are dead because they weren't useful enough, they weren't what people needed.


And Why is Leximo Multilingual?

Because the first 1 Billion internet users where English speakers. The next 1 Billion won't be!
Leximo will cater to the languages of developing world.



== Getting Started - 

Leximo's To-Do List


1. Cross Browser & HTML/CSS Issues - Fix HTML and CSS bugs and Cross Browser Support according to W3.
Browsers include Firefox, IE, Chrome and Safari. I can deploy and request testing screenshots from Browsershots.org.


2. Unicode Search - I’ve been trying to enable Unicode searching for Thinking Sphinx, so that Leximo can search any language character (i.e words w/accents, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic). Could use someone to help me out.

Some sites I’ve been trying to get help from:

http://yob.id.au/blog/2008/05/08/thinking_sphinx_and_unicode/

http://www.expressionlab.com/2008/11/19/thinking-sphinx-in-arabic-unicode

I tried following the Arabic one, but I wasn’t able to search using Arabic characters when I tested.


3. Testing - Test Leximo and find out bugs and possible solutions.


4. API -Create an API (REST, SOAP, XML) that allows developers to make use of Leximo’s data.


5. RSS Feeds - Add RSS Feeds for popular, recent words, tags, search results and user pages.

6. Videos & Pictures -Allow users to embed videos and pictures into word submissions, and add avatars for users. 
Partially done, videos so far are generated based on the word. Would like to give users the power to add a link like YouTube
or Flickr and have the video or picture become embedded on the page.

7. Commenting - http://github.com/elight/acts_as_commentable_with_threading/tree/master

8. Make Leximo SEMANTIC - This is our Ultimate DREAM and VISION. :-)


Thats all as of now. 

We appreciate any help that we can get :-)


== == Contributors

-Ian Balina (Co-founder)
-Asad Mahmood (Co-founder)
-Nicolas Alejandro Santa
-Dru Werd