Ithildin Dictionary

based on Eldamo - An Elvish Lexicon (https://eldamo.org)

UPDATE March 21, 2021 Preview version for Mac OS is available in dist/Ithildin.app.zip

This version does not yet have the Java runtime included, so make sure you have Java v.11 available on your system. Click the dist folder in the source tree above, download Ithildin.app.zip to your Applications folder and run it in the usual way.

UPDATE february 19, 2021

This is the second implementation of the Ithildin application, picking up where that one was left. This is what we have in mind for now:

1: technical update

The first goal is to refactor the codebase to work with Spring Boot. There are now some approaches available to use JavaFX in a Spring Boot application. I settled on FXWeaver by Rene Gielen.

Using Spring Boot offers a couple of advantages, like the support of the JPA framework for repository classes. It makes the whole thing a lot simpler and easier to maintain.

I switched from SQLite to H2 for database engine, because the latter is written in Java and very easy to use with Spring Boot.

SQLite is written in C and probably faster, but it being platform dependent might complicate packaging the application which is already more than daunting as it is. Besides, nobody would notice the difference in database performance with this app.

2: simplify database schema and update contents to the latest version of Eldamo

As soon as the application is working with the existing SQLite version of Eldamo v.0.5.6.1, the idea is to simplify the still rather complex DB schema and update the contents with the most recent version of the Eldamo data.

3: develop functionality to allow users to add and share their own words

The original idea behind Ithildin is to offer a dictionary tool suited for both practical / creative and academic usage. We want to make it possible for users to add their own (reconstructed) words. The idea is to store these separate from the Eldamo data, so that there would essentially be three categories:

• the original attested material from the work of JRR Tolkien (available in Eldamo)
• Neo-eldarin words generally accepted by the community (also available in Eldamo)
• newly added material for personal use or to share with those interested (not in Eldamo)

We've had some discussions on how material from the third category could eventually be moved to the second one, but this is still very much open.

4: explore other use cases

Because the data model allows for other languages besides those described by JRR Tolkien, there could be other areas where this application might prove useful.

5: create versions for mobile platforms

Candidate platform: Gluonhq