Re: Dictionary formats

        Well, for Vaior I use HTML to keep track of all vocabulary.
It only goes one way, Vaior-English, which is sometimes irritating,
but I can use the Find function in my browser to look things up when
I need to.

        If you look at http://www.execpc.com/~wsannis/vaior/orinambe.html
you'll notice that I use <dt><dd> for top-level definitions, then <ul>
for derived or related words under the top-level items where
necessary.

        What I'd really like to do eventually is cram everyting into a
database.  This would make searching rather easier.  I have looked at
Kura to see if I could use that database schema, but I've not devoted
too much attention to it yet.  If I didn't have such a great fear of
Qt, I'd probably use that.

        I've also thought about designing an XML format for
dictionaries and then writing some tools to manipulate that, so that I
could create dictionaries in any direction I want.  The biggest
problem with this is that there is serious trickiness when it comes to
the lengthy definitions sometimes required to get from Vaior to
English.  Somehow you'd also have to mark up the definition so that
keywords could be noted and English-Vaior translations would work
sensibly.  For example, if I do a browser Find on 'too' then I have
problems: it shows up in many definitions.  I only want to find the
entries for which 'too' is a keyword.

        Sorry.  I'm rambling a bit.  I've been thinking about this
problem for almost a year, but I've not yet had time to devote to it,
or to really grok the matter.

--
wm

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