Persues Tools: Tech-y Question

[jbutle04]

Does anybody know how to get vocab lists out of Perseus (via the Vocab tool) and into an excel (or some other) spreadsheet? I use excel 2008 (mac) and firefox 3.5.9. I honestly just don't understand .xml, but when I ask for that output, I can't understand what I'm supposed to do with the marked-up gobbledygook.

I'm happy to abandon excel, but I don't understand the .xml markups and format well enough to know what else can be done with it.

Thanks!

[Jeff Tirey]

The Perseus Project has some of the neatest data around and I just love their vocabulary lists that can be generated.

I can probably help you out as I have played around with their xml feed in the past. I experimented with building an interface to select and build specific vocabulary lists, the problem I found was the server seemed unresponsive quite often. So much so that it would not provide a stable experience for users. I abandoned my approach after I saw that they offer a full data download.

Was there a specific vocabulary list you were looking for? I wrote this simply php script which can fetch a word and it can be modified to grab an entire list. Once grabbed it can be saved to a .csv file. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Here's a sample file that request a word from Perseus.
http://www.textkit.com/xml.php

Kindly,
Jeff