I have been working on some TEI dictionaries, and (this is obvious, I know)
vanilla TEI produces very boring entries in the front-ends. I point this out as
a preface to offering a suggestion for front-end developers preparing to
introduce TEI support. Here is a typical TEI entry:
<entry key="an toạ">
<form><orth>an toạ</orth><pron>(phonetic representation)</pron></form>
<gramGrp><pos>verb</pos></gramGrp>
<def>To take a seat, to be seated</def>
<eg><q>mời các vị an toạ</q></eg><trans><tr>pray, everyone, take a
seat</tr></trans>
</entry>
Here is what it looks like in BibleTime:
AN TOẠ an toạ(phonetic representation)verb To take a seat, to be seated mời
các vị an toạpray, everyone, take a seat
I'm not meaning to pick on BibleTime--BibleCS only formats the part of speech in
italics.
Here's the suggestion. Recently a friend of mine pointed me to an SIL-developed
program that can be used to create and publish lexicons. It's called Lexique
Pro, and you can download it at http://www.lexiquepro.com/download.htm. They use
a TeX-like method of tagging data, but there's no reason why what they have done
can't be applied to XML data. Here is the above example formatted by Lexique Pro:
*an toạ* /verb. /[(phonetic representation)];To take a seat, to be seated.
*mời các vị an toạ* pray, everyone, take a seat.
Notice that they have varied the font, font size, font color, bold, and italics
of each part of the entry so that it is easier to read. They have also added
punctuation to separate parts of the entry. Before I heard about the upcoming
TEI support I had put together a dictionary using THML, complete with
punctuation and line breaks to help make it easier to read the entry. That's not
the role of the TEI xml file, though. Lexique Pro's way of handling entries is
not the only way, but I suggest it as ONE useful way developed by people who
deal with lexicons daily.
For what it's worth,
Daniel
--
PMBX license 1502
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