Re: Lexicon management
| From: | Iain E. Davis <feaelin@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Tuesday, August 24, 2004, 14:30 |
|---|
> From: Remi Villatel [mailto:maxilys@TELE2.FR]
> For those who already have a somewhat big lexicon, how do you
> manage it?
> From: Caleb [mailto:cph9fa@ADMIRAL.UMSL.EDU]
> Spreadsheets are very nice. They have nice layout and
> formating features, as well as powerful searching, sorting,
> and filtering features. But let's face it, the data in them
> isn't very open if you want to write your own tools for
The tools are there, at least in Excel. I've not worked with Quattro or
Lotus in so long, I wouldn't know what features they have. :)
> manipulating it. And they may or may not be cross-platform
> compatible (or even cross software compatible -- Excel
> doesn't like my Corel Quatro Pro files eg.)
Conversion is often a problem. Generally, it's a version juggling act...its
not that Excel doesn't like Quattro files, it depends on the version of
Excel, the version of Quattro, and what Quattro features you used...:)
On the cross-platform note, I'm assuming my files are readable in
OpenOffice. I assume though, that the VBA macros I use I'd have to recreate
on the OpenOffice platform? I've never investigated that.
> So the route I've taken is to place all my words into a
> simple text file. I haven't decided for sure what to use for
Bleah. :). But extremely portable, as you say. Nearly everything attempts to
parse those kinds of files. :)
> best part is that it shouldn't be too difficult to write a
> simple program/script in one of C/C++/Python/Perl to output
> my own HTML file -- or any other format for that matter.
I'm doing this with my excel data. I wrote a VBA script that spits out valid
HTML instead of the garbage that Excel produces on its own. :). I also have
a script that generates a dictionary-style msword document of the same
material. The same script actually generates three sections. A
Taraitola-to-English "dictionary". A cross-index section that simply points
you to the Taraitola entry you should read, and a "Important People"
section. :)
Interestingly, the script that generates the dictionary-style document
became painfully slow after upgrading to
XP/2003. :(
I'm impressed. I've experimented in that direction, but I've not really
gotten to a viable solution yet. I also have concerns about losing the ease
of manipulation I have in Excel. :). I've considered building the tables in
excel as separate worksheets, for ease of manipulation. :)
Iain
Reply