Friday, February 09, 2007

Hello, my name is Gonzalo.
Along with my wife Mariana we created a Classic Greek computer program called Kalós.
Recently, we changed our hosting company to hostmonster.com, and created a web site there whose url is http://www.kalos-software.com
The program can be downloaded for free, and it provides a free Greek/English/Spanish/French dictionary. It also contains a utility to find the canonical or "dictionary" form given an inflected form. And it is able to print several kinds of inflection charts (the full verb conjugation, the full declension for substantives, the inflection for participles, the declension and gender/number inflection for adjectives, etc.).
Right now it reached version 4.0.7.
People keep downloading it, sending suggestions and praise, and reporting occasional errors.
We are very proud of the software, although we would like it to generate some income. The problem is, we don't really "cripple" it. Once in a while, a nagging screen appears reminding the user to pay for it, but aside from that there is no way of forcing people to pay for it.
Another problem is our competition, the powerful "Perseus" software (now Hopper), a huge database of Greek texts created by Tufts University http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/
It also contains a morphological analysis tool, and its database is huge. Besides, it links all or most words of the Greek texts it contains to a few well known dictionaries, among them the very respectable Liddel-Scott, recognized as an authority by Classic Greek scholars.
On the plus side, Kalós is a downloadable program and it doesn't need an Internet connection once installed. The display capabilities of Perseus (how to display Greek letters, etc) are also somewhat lacking, and it suffers numerous server outages; Kalós doesn't.



یہ موسم ملنے کا ہے. This is the season to unite
پھولوں کے کھلنے کا ہے. For flowers to blossom
آ جا رے مورے سَیّاں. Come, my beloved!
آ جا رے مورے رسیا. Oh, come, my libertine!
آ جا. Come!