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Dear friends:

[Using Dell Dimension 8200 with Windows XP Home Edition and 512 megs of
Rambus ram and ADSL).

I am trying to publish on the web a book called Linguadex, which is a
one-way, English to Russian dictionary of spoken English to spoken
Russian based on keywords. I will be happy to send you an attachment
illustrating a sample page.

The book consists of two parts: an English one of around 300 pages,
organzied by keyword using a table structure of three columns (sentence
in the left column, keyword in the middle column and a number in the
right column indicating the Russian translation in the second Russian
part of the book (about 200 pages), which is a straightforward listing
of the Russian translation in simple text format, line by line. To make
this possible, especially the critical middle column for the keyword,
the sentence typography was handled in a rather strange way so as to
make this proto-hypertext possible. Quite ingenious, really, if you are
a student of Russian and need the perfect Russian equivalent for a given
English sentence. For example, the keyword "about" may generate many
English sentences such as: "What is this all ABOUT?"; "How about going
shopping"; "About how much would you pay for this coat?" Etc., You get
the idea. The Russian part of Linguadex is a located separate in the
back of the book and is a simple text file consisting of a long list of
sentences, each keyed to the number in the English text. There is only
ONE Russian equivalent for each English sentence in this one-way English
to Russian dictionary.

At first, I thought I would use my new Abby Fine Reader OCR program to
scann all the English pages, but the complex table structure and the
fact that each page would have to be edited, anyway, in MSWord and
linked by a hyperlink to the Russian phrase or sentence has made me
reconsider. Perhaps it would be better to start from scratch, retype the
entire manuscript either in Word or directly FrontPage or whatever and
then create an online keyword dictionary that would allow the user to
scroll down a screen that would show the list of keywords and that would
allow the reader to quickly "flip" from page to page, from A to Z, then
select the sentence that interests him/her, click on it and instantly
see the Russian equivalent, preselected for it in the database (i.e.
from the second part of the book). I would like for the general
structure to allow the reader to experience the book as a book online,
i.e. not simply to see a single keyword word like "about" in a narrow
rectangular box but rather to see each page of the book in its entirey
on his browser screen, and to be able to click on the appropriate
Russian hyperlink. Or, at the very list, to allow the reader to scroll
down the list of keywords, click on the keyword and automatically bring
up all sentences generated by this keyword. And, of course, I want to
make sure that the reader can see the results equally well in every
browser. I am even hoping to eventually expand this to a two-way
dictionary, but for the time being, I would be very pleased just to be
able put this wonderful dictionary online as it is.

I am not sure which way to start. I have as my tools MSOffice XP,
FrontPage 2002, MS Publisher, IBM WebSphere Home Page Builder 6.0,
StarOFfice 5.2 for Windows, a variety of HTML programs such as 1st Page,
Webmaster, Arachnophilia, CoffeeHTML, etc. I would be willing to pay
someone to guide me. I would like to learn how to do this and do it on
my own, but, naturally, I need someone who has experience to help me.
Once again, I am looking mainly for conceptual help, for finding out
what tools I should use and for basic step-by-step general instructions.
Perhaps you could also suggest a specific Internet site as a model. For
this general help, I am willing to pay around $100 by check at the
conclusion of the project or in two installments, one at the beginning
and one at the end. Please look at my attachment first and let me know
if this is the right project for you. I need real hands-on help, but
most of the work is routine and I once I know what my optiosn are, I
will be able to proceed. Finally, I am looking for a simple solution,
not for something that will cost thousands of dollars. The final product
will be hosted on my client's web site.

Thank you very much.

Benjamin Sher
sher07@mindspring.com