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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. :(
> From: Rik Roots [mailto:rik@kalieda.org] > I use a database (MySQL), which I access through a web browser: > > http://www.kalieda.org/gevey/lexicon.html
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

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Patrick Jarrett <gtg346g@...>