Steve Pepper <[log in to unmask]> asked last week:
 
"Has anybody actually encoded a real live bilingual dictionary
in accordance with the TEI guidelines?"
 
Perhaps not. But several dictionaries have been SGML encoded
according to the DANLEX principles (cf. footnote 1 on p. 321
in the Green Book).
 
Long time before TEI, the DANLEX Group tried to make a standard
format for dictionary entries. After much work in comparing all
kinds of dictionary, we had to conclude that no single _format_
("grammar", DTD) for a dictionary entry could be defined, unless
- of course - it allows "virtually any element to appear virtually
anywhere in the dictionary entry" (citation from TEI p3, p. 321).
A similar conclusion seems to be the basis of the ISO standard
MATER 1985.
 
Any further constraints will lead to absurd conflicts like
the one reported to the TEI discussion list in December by Don
D. Anderson <[log in to unmask]>: "the guidelines say that
<etym> may occur [somwhere]; however, in [some dictionary] it
appears [elsewhere] .. is there a solution? Help!"
 
Consequently, the DANLEX Group decided to redefine its job:
 
Not the sequence of information types, neither the way they
are combined (e.g. in some hierarchical structure) should be
standardized, but the information types themselves. This resulted
in a taxonomy of the units of information that make part of
any dictionary or lexical data collection. The taxonomy has
been used as a guideline for encoding of existing dictionaries
and for the planning of new ones.
 
The work was published in "Descriptive Tools for Electronic
Processing of Dictionary Data" (Lexicographica Series Maior 20,
Niemeyer, Tuebingen 1987). Summaries in Danish, French and
German are available. For those of you who understand Danish,
a couple of more recent papers also exist.
 
Best regards,
Ole
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* Ole Norling-Christensen - [log in to unmask]                  *
* The Danish Dictionary - KUA, Njalsgade 80, DK-2300 Copenhagen S *
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