Dictionaries, practical question

Hi all, this is not strictly TEI, as you'll see, but I suspect there are
a number of lexicographers here. I was asked yesterday by someone
compiling a Latin dictionary if there was a standard (perhaps
database-type) piece of application software in which to compile, edit,
and search it. He is (sigh) using Microsoft Word at the moment, and has
rejected the usual filemaker-type databases as not sufficiently
supportive of word-processor-type formatting (multiple languages and
fonts, etc.) I of course pointed out that the chief desideratum for
future functionality was to distinguish unambiguously between different
structurally distinct pieces of each entry; that XML was a good vehicle
for recording the sort of mixture of fielded, normalized and free-form
text typical of dictionaries; that XML could be entered, searched, and
edited in any number of applications, from Access forms to simple text
editors; and that TEI did have a functional dictionaries module which
was worth considering. I am investigating further as to what he actually
hopes to do with the data, which makes a big difference. 

But in the meantime: is there in fact a popular software choice amongst
working lexicographers? (To the extent that anything used by
lexicographers could be called 'popular'!)

pfs

-- 
Paul Schaffner  Digital Library Production Service
[email protected] | http://www.umich.edu/~pfs/