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<DIV>Hi Philip,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Before I give my perspective on your specific questions, a piece of general
advice is to print out the User Guide and study it carefully. Many of your
questions are answered by the guide, as well as by the YouTube demos and the
online FAQs and examples.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>You would have to ask TLex how long the trial version works for and what
features are missing.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I have not used TLex for building a name dictionary. I am currently using
tlCorpus for a schools’ dictionary project, and it does seem to me that it could
be used to build a name corpus.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><U>The Specific Questions</U></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>1. The parts of speech are editable, and this is covered on p.61.
“Attribute Lists”. Thus, you could rename the POS attribute and call it
“Language of Origin” and the list could include options such as English, Greek,
French, etc instead of noun, verb, adjective, etc. You could also include the
original spelling of the name – in any script you choose (e.g. Greek, Hebrew)
– by utilizing the “Translation Equivalent” (TE) facility (see p.61.). The
TE can be positioned anywhere within the entry. Thus, it could be formatted so
as to appear to be a run-on of the “Language of Origin” attribute.
Alternatively, you could utilize the Lua Script “smart styles” facility (p.84).
I have not tried this myself, but my understanding is that it could generate
attributes formatted like (Greek, Philippos), as in your question.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>2. I am not conversant with InDesign. However, I do know that whatever
formatting is set in the DTD is fully preserved when exporting. This includes
colours, fonts, spacing, etc. etc. I also know that the TLex exporter offers the
option of exporting in columns (at least two – I’m not sure about ‘multiple’)
and there is a guide to exporting on pp. 91-95 of the user guide. I don’t
understand the question about ‘links’ but if you get an answer to that question
from someone else, I would be grateful for a copy. I am also interested in
creating interactivity on a digital platform.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>3. I don’t think there is any way to dynamically link external data to TLex
data. But a non-dynamic solution is available by way of the frequency facility
(p.34). You could easily import the rank numbers from your spreadsheet and have
them displayed as an attribute (p.61.).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>4. TLex provides a default DTD which can be modified for the specific
purposes of any dictionary (e.g. a name dictionary). Various template DTD’s are
also available. Of course, you could also set up a unique DTD from scratch. Easy
or difficult is a question of how much time you have for the job. I would
suggest you set up a pilot project for approximately 100 lemmas (i.e. names) and
develop a new DVD by means of trial-and-error testing. A Lua filter (see p.103)
may provide a means <FONT face="Times New Roman">of </FONT>setting up a section
of the entry that is dependent on something being true. I’m not sure on this,
not having tried it myself. TLex never wastes space. If any one element is
defined in the DTD, but not populated in a particular entry, then the next
populated element follows on immediately from the previous one. As for notifying
you whether or not all entries marked as biblical had associated passages
assigned, this can be easily done – during the compilation stage – by tagging
and filtering. A thorough demonstration of this technique is available on
YouTube.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>5. In one word, the answer is ‘Yes’. Read up on elements and their
attributes on pp. 56-57. The relevant attribute in this case is ‘etymology’,
which is available by default in the standard DTD. I cannot give you an
authorative answer about linking an index to a page number, but I imagine that
it could be done by someone who has programming skills in both TLex and
InDesign. Once again, if you get an answer to that question from someone else, I
would be grateful for a copy.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>6. XSL or CSV data can be imported into TLex. However, the success of the
procedure depends on strictly mapping the column headings to the relevant TLex
element. This would mean that you would have to standardise the format of all
your spreadsheets first, set up your ideal DTD, and then do some trial runs to
see if the import presents the data satisfactorily. However, as I understand the
question, your data is not actually a corpus in the same sense as the word is
used in lexicography and by tlCorpus. If you do want to go that way, and if your
original sources are in .doc files or .txt files, you could use them to build a
unified tlCorpus corpus (the process is quick and painless) and to use it
instead of the Excel files. This would enable you to view all the instances of a
particular name, to get a frequency count on each name, to view the name in
context (i.e. with X words before and after), to view the entire original text
and to copy-paste chunks of text from tlCorpus to tLex.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I hope you will find this information helpful.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>All the best</DIV>
<DIV>Geoff </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: 12pt">~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<BR>Geoff
Toister<BR><A href="http://www.gt-lex.weebly.com">www.gt-lex.weebly.com</A>
</DIV>
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