Re: Dictionaries, practical question

Hi Paul,

There is an incomplete but helpful list on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_writing_system

Are you aware of the following very interesting document? It was created as part of the ENEL (European Network of e-Lexicography) Cost Action by very experienced experts in the field (Abel, Krek, Tiberius): Bibliography –Dictionary Writing Systems (DWS) & related software
http://www.elexicography.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Bibliography_DWS_CQS_v7_web.pdf

The Viennese Lexicographic Editor (VLE) is a Windows standalone application which we have been developing for quite some time now. Several smaller dictionaries were done with it. The most recent one is:
https://basex-dev.eos.arz.oeaw.ac.at/dict_api/tunico/tunis_dict__v002.html (prod. server; link will change)

Others you can find on the Vienna-Corpus-of-Arabic-Varieties (VICAV) website:
https://vicav.acdh.oeaw.ac.at

VLE is a general-purpose XML editor enhanced by functionalities typically needed in editing lexical data. We have compiled all our dictionaries in TEI. If you want to see details of the encoding, have a look here:
https://clarin.oeaw.ac.at/lrp/dict-gate/docs.html

VLE makes use of various XML technologies, e.g. XSLT, XPath, XQuery. It has a number of useful features which were needed in our projects (validation against XML Schema, visualisation through customizable XSLT in all parts of the system, sound recording etc). Recent versions are tightly integrated with the BaseX database which makes it easy to set up local instances. We also have implemented versioning. It comes with a tokenEditor that allows to furnish corpora with dictionary IDs. Recently we have been working on an Application Creator module which helps to create web applications by means of a very simple wizard.

Due to time pressure, VLE is still scarcely documented although we have been working on this. It is freely available. If you want to try it, get in touch. I am happy to help. VLE is an ongoing project.

All the best

Charly
________________________________________________
Karlheinz Moerth
Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities
Austrian Academy of Sciences
Sonnenfelsgasse 19/2nd floor
1010 Wien
Tel: +43 1 51581-2220



-----Original Message-----
From: TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) public discussion list [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Piotr Banski
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2017 11:22 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Dictionaries, practical question

I have worked with FLEx and FLEx-generated XML, first preparing a large 
corpus-derived dictionary for FLEx ingestion and then iterating on that. 
It can be done with only a minor headache as you learn the underlying 
format and then e.g. discover the differences between particular versions.

I don't really see an ontological platform for comparing FLEx vs. TEI. 
FLEx is a 'machine`, TEI is a metaformat. I'd take FLEx for 
lexicographic work and then worry about potential export to TEI (or 
rather transformation from FLEx export). Or even attempt to go both 
ways, if the initial data are in TEI, but then, maintaining references 
could be a challenge.

I have planned to check out the Viennese Lexicographic Editor[1], and 
even managed to run it under Linux, but got stuck afterwards. It is 
definitely worth trying for some lexicographic tasks, especially when 
it's gotten more documentation.

[1] http://www.oeaw.ac.at/acdh/de/vle

Good luck,

   Piotr


On 01/11/2017 10:55 PM, Patrick Sahle wrote:
>
> I had a similar discussion only today: a colleague wants to create from
> a 18th century manuscript a multi language lexicon using FieldWorks/FLEx
> (http://fieldworks.sil.org/). I tried to convince him on the advantages
> using TEI would have but didn't get through. I see his arguments for an
> easy to use tool that is established in his field. But I am concerned
> about the loss of information about the material, visual and structural
> aspects of the documents. We are now discussing into two directions:
> - would it be possible to convert from FLEx to (sufficiently information
> rich) TEI in the end? Mainly for interoperability reasons ...
> - would it be wise to go from TEI to FLEx (keeping more information from
> the documents, but working without an easy editing tool)?
>
> Any experiences on this around?
>
> Best, Patrick
>
> Am 11.01.2017 um 16:37 schrieb Paul Schaffner:
>> 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
>>
>
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Apl. Prof. Dr. Patrick Sahle
> Koordinierungsstelle Digital Humanities der Nordrhein-Westfälischen
> Akademie der Wissenschaften
> Cologne Center for eHumanities (CCeH) <http://www.cceh.uni-koeln.de/>
> Data Center for the Humanities <http://www.dch.uni-koeln.de/>
> DiXiT ITN <http://www.dixit.uni-koeln.de/>
> Institut für Dokumentologie und Editorik <http://www.i-d-e.de>
>
> Postanschrift: Cologne Center for eHumanities (CCeH), Universität zu
> Köln, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, D-50923 Köln
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-- 
Piotr Bański, Ph.D.
Senior Researcher,
Institut für Deutsche Sprache,
R5 6-13
68-161 Mannheim, Germany