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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:<br>
<blockquote><entry key="an toạ"><br>
<form><orth>an toạ</orth><pron>(phonetic
representation)</pron></form><br>
<gramGrp><pos>verb</pos></gramGrp><br>
<def>To take a seat, to be seated</def><br>
<eg><q>mời các vị an
toạ</q></eg><trans><tr>pray, everyone, take a
seat</tr></trans><br>
</entry><br>
</blockquote>
Here is what it looks like in BibleTime:<br>
<blockquote>AN TOẠ an toạ(phonetic representation)verb To take a seat,
to be seated mời các vị an toạpray, everyone, take a seat<br>
</blockquote>
I'm not meaning to pick on BibleTime--BibleCS only formats the part of
speech in italics.<br>
<br>
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
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.lexiquepro.com/download.htm">http://www.lexiquepro.com/download.htm</a>. 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:<br>
<meta http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<title></title>
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 2.4 (Linux)">
<style type="text/css">
<!--
@page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in }
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in }
-->
</style>
<blockquote>
<p
style="margin-left: 0.59in; text-indent: -0.59in; margin-top: 0.04in; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<meta http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<title></title>
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 2.4 (Linux)">
<style type="text/css">
<!--
@page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in }
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in }
-->
</style>
<p
style="margin-left: 0.59in; text-indent: -0.59in; margin-top: 0.04in; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p>
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p
style="margin-left: 0.59in; text-indent: -0.59in; margin-top: 0.04in; margin-bottom: 0in;"><big><b><big><font
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">an toạ</font></big></b></big> <big><font
color="#0000ff"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font
style="font-size: 9pt;" size="2"><big><i>verb. </i></big></font></font></font><font
color="#000080"><font face="Lucida Sans Unicode, sans-serif"><font
style="font-size: 9pt;" size="2"><big>[(phonetic
representation)];</big></font></font></font><font color="#000000"><font
face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="2"><big><span lang="en">To
take a seat, to be seated.</span></big></font></font></font> <font
color="#000080"><font face="Lucida Sans Unicode, sans-serif"><font
style="font-size: 9pt;" size="2"><big><b>mời
các vị an toạ</b></big></font></font></font> <font color="#000000"><font
face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="2"><big><span lang="en">pray,
everyone, take a seat</span></big></font></font></font><font
color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="2"><big>.</big></font></font></font></big><br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<p>For what it's worth,<br>
Daniel<br>
</p>
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PMBX license 1502
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