[Lexicog] MDFdict files and toolbox export

[Robert Early]

Martin Hosken wrote: "A better solution is to concentrate on the database
aspect when doing data entry and only worry about document layout when it
comes to final typesetting of a dictionary. This is the direction newer
tools are taking."

I would disagree with this.  Any field linguist who knows how to use Word
styles and templates can readily produce a high standard of final formatting
which completely does away with the need for professional typesetting of any
kind.  The field linguist is the only person who can correctly hyphenate the
vernacular text anyway.  Obtaining an acceptable page layout and format etc.
is trivially accomplished at any stage of the project, and compilers are
going to want to get suitable printout on a continual basis throughout the
project, not just at the end.

But I do agree that the existing tools like Toolbox and LexiquePro do have
some inbuilt features which become limiting.  Sometimes I just wish that I
could switch off all the internal reordering of fields that seems to built
into the programs.  I have been using these tools for monolingual dictionary
projects, and have found that the program has to be tricked(by using various
field codes that are supposed to have different functions) to get what I
need.  The tools have been built with the production of bilingual and
multilingual dictionaries in mind, but the application of these tools to
monolingual dictionary production is not seamless.


**************************************************
Robert Early, USP, Vanuatu
early_r at vanuatu.usp.ac.fj
**************************************************


-----Original Message-----
From: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
[mailto:lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Martin Hosken
Sent: Friday, 28 March 2008 1:03 p.m.
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] MDFdict files and toolbox export


Dear Dimitris,

> First of all, I saw no other way to have it the way I need it, than 
> introducing two new markers \ar for the article (in case of nouns) and 
> \gs for grammatical notes (on the declension, for example).

It's a long time since I hacked around with MDF export, but if you want to
add a new marker, then there a few places you need to add information:

mdf.typ needs to have the new marker and set it to character style mdf?.dot
needs to have styling for the new marker and the mdf?dict.cct files need to
do sensible things with the markers.

I know that some effort has been underway for a while to make MDF export
much more flexible, but when that involved a huge number of cct files (like
10) people started looking for different approaches to typesetting
dictionaries. One such tool is shlex which is part of the Shoebox Utilities,
which can be found at http://scripts.sil.org/shutils-manual but that is a
pretty fearsome tool if you haven't used it before.

The problem with MDF is that it tries to be two things at once. It tries to
be both a true lexical database and a lexical document at the same time. The
result is that it keeps tripping over itself. A better solution is to
concentrate on the database aspect when doing data entry and only worry
about document layout when it comes to final typesetting of a dictionary.
This is the direction newer tools are taking.

Yours,
Martin

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