If you create an entry with an ILIDefinition, but ill.id='' you lose the definition

[fcbond]

In the Japanese wordnet we have some entries where we have created an ILIDefinition, but are still not ready to propose them.

<Synset id="wnja-80002360-n" partOfSpeech="n" ili="">
      <Definition>ヒノキの木材</Definition>
      <ILIDefinition>wood of Japanese cypress</ILIDefinition>

In this case, wn loses the ILI definition (as it is defined for an ILI and there is no ILI).

Not sure what is the best thing to do here. If I make up an ili_id , then I can manipulate the definition, but it will surely cause problems later, ...

[goodmami]

Why not make these synset definitions with language attributes?

<Synset id="wnja-80002360-n" partOfSpeech="n" ili="">
      <Definition>ヒノキの木材</Definition>
      <Definition language="en">wood of Japanese cypress</Definition>

I'm also somewhat opposed to the idea of ILI-definitions in lexicons in general (globalwordnet/schemas#43), especially now that Wn can load ILIs separately from lexicons.

[goodmami]

The WN-LMF schema does not prevent nor otherwise forbid an <ILIDefinition> from appearing for any particular values or absence of the ili attribute, so in some sense I agree that there is a missing feature in Wn here, but the conventional usage is that ILIDefinition only appears when a new ILI is proposed (ili="in"). For established ILIs, the definitions should be in the ILI file, and it doesn't make sense to me to have an ILI definition when there is no ILI whatsoever.

In any case, I'm not going to fix this because it would require schema changes (thus forcing anyone who upgrades to rebuild their database) for a fairly obscure use case. I suggest you store these definitions elsewhere or use synset definitions as shown in my previous comment.