[Lexicog] rendering Shoebox to RTF

[Sean M. Burke]

Over the years I've been writing little programs here and there that read
in Shoebox lexicons (developed by friends of mine) and then write out nice
RTF renderings of them, for editing/printing in MSWord.

Along the way I wrote the best (and only) book about RTF
(<http://interglacial.com/rtf/>), and picked up a lot about lexicography.

Now the guys tha run Perl.com have asked me to write a little article about
how to write RTF lexicon renderers in Perl.  Is there any particular topics
you all on the list would to see me cover in that article?
So far I've sketched out a few basics that I hope I can squeeze in:

* intro - show a Shoebox format lexicon database, and mention that dealing
with XML is basically only a bit more complex than this
* how to read in a lexicon as a data structure
* basic RTF layout commands: indenting, font control, bold, italic, text
size, language codes
* basic entry formatting -- pouring single values into an entry template
* complaining about bad data in entries
* conditional formatting -- dropping in examples/etymologies/cultural-notes
as applicable; formatting "1. [sense 1].  2. [sense 2].  ", etc.
* dropping in an illustration from a file (must be JPG or PNG)
* sorting entries in native order
* putting entry "foo bar" under "foo bar" but also generating a crossref
under "bar, foo" ?
* generating a reverse (English->Native) lexicon, sorted in English order
* laying the page out in 2 or 3 columns.
--
Sean M. Burke    http://search.cpan.org/~sburke/



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