Re: Dictionary Programs?

On Mon, Aug 26, 2002 at 06:20:03PM -0700, Arthaey Angosii wrote:
> What do you use to keep your lexicon orderly?
I write my lexicon in LaTeX, which is a very nice typesetting system.
Because Ebisedian word order is sometimes quite tricky, I found out that I
wasn't putting things in the right order, etc.. And it was too tedious to
manually comb through the entire lexicon every time I suspect an ordering
problem. So I wrote a little program that parses the LaTeX files and
performs such checks as verifying dictionary order, verifying that
cross-references exist, etc..

It has grown quite a bit since I wrote it; now it also computes statistics
on how many times a given consonant/vowel appears, etc.. In the near
future, I hope to be able to automatically generate an
English-to-Ebisedian document using this tool.

> Scraps of paper strewn across
> my computer desk just isn't working well for me. :)
Oh, if I did that, Ebisedian would still be only 50-word strong today.
Perhaps even less. :-)

>  I currently keep some
> of my vocabulary in one big Word file, which I realize is a pretty limited
> system.
Yeah... the problem with Word is that it's a binary file format, and
unless you do some really heavy-duty shenanigans with Word macros, it's
going to be very hard to organize it.

But learning LaTeX isn't a trivial task either, so I'm hesitant to
recommend it. Esp. if you want to get to the level you can write a
machine-parseable lexicon (very important for any hope of automation, as I
found out) and still look good once processed.

Plus, if you're not a programming addict like I am, you might not find
this a very inviting proposition. :-)

> Does anyone have some advice on a good Windows dictionary program
> (or any other database program, I suppose)? I tried using Access, but I
> couldn't get the relations part to work properly.
[snip]

Hmm. I suppose you could try Boudewijn Rempt's "Kura", which is intended
to be an all-round conlanging tool. I've never really tried it myself, as
my needs were a bit different (parsing Ebisedian's clumsy ASCII
orthography is one--although it's painfully ugly, I still find it more
efficient to type than to use a clumsy GUI and selecting symbols from
pulldown menus all the time). I believe Kura has the ability to organize
your lexicon (ie., store it in a database).

Unfortunately, I do not know if Kura will even run on Windows. The python
part is OK, but I believe it uses MySQL, which isn't free on Windows. (Or
have things since changed?)

Anyway, check it out. You might find it helpful. Pay a visit to
valdyas.org.


T

--
If we don't succeed we run the risk of failure. -- Dan Quayle

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