On 10 March 2002, Steven Rowat said:
> On the site, the web user asks a ficticious "Doctor" a question
> (plain-english sentence), using an HTML form. A script filters out the
> stop-words, and then searches among a database of hundreds of ready-made
> answers, and chooses just *one* that is the best match of text words and
> keywords, and displays the full text of *only* that one as the answer; so
> that there is a dialog set up between the user and the 'doctor'. (A
> refinement, also, could be that the web user may sign the original
> question, "wondering" or "just curious", or a name, "john", and the
> Doctor's reply can start, "Dear Wondering" in true Dear Abby style).

This sounds like something you could do with any web application
framework; there's nothing special about Quixote that will make this
stunningly easy or painfully difficult.

> Any thoughts or leads appreciated. I know HTML and some javascript, and I'm
> willing to move to Linux or MacOS X.

If you don't have server-side web development experience with a real
programming language, you have your work cut out for you.  I happen to
think that Quixote is a very intuitive and natural way to write web
apps, but it's also relatively young, and might be quite difficult for a
non-expert-web-developer to "get".

> MacOS 9.2, G3/233

AFAIK no one has used Quixote on Mac OS.  I expect there would be the
usual array of minor problems; we've fixed a bunch of small problems
people reported with Windows, and I would expect similar
incompatibilities with a third OS.  Might be easier with OS X, since
we're distinctly Unix-biased.  ;-)

        Greg
--
Greg Ward - software developer                gward@mems-exchange.org
MEMS Exchange                            http://www.mems-exchange.org