Tables support (word forms, grammar)

[Tvangeste]

What is the recommended way to create tables with XDXF?

[soshial]

No, unfortunately not. Are they needed that much in a dictionary?

[Tvangeste]

Many dictionaries contain some table data, e.g., word forms, grammatical tables, etc.

Many DSL users complain regularly that the tables are not supported by DSL format.

Many well-known dictionaries contain tables, e.g. Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, Longman dictionaries, Verbix dictionaries.

[soshial]

Thank you. I will consider this idea.

Namely, I surely agree that dictionaries could benefit from tables, but I don't see a good way of "entwining" it to the existing schema of XDXF format. If the format were to support all table orientation/decoration/etc stuff, I would need to allow the full full-fledged HTML/CSS ti be written in xdxf, which is exactly what I would like to avoid. There is a bad example of this practice: ePub book format has this support, but different readers support these features at their own will and it results in the fact that for ebook creators the files could be inconsistent with some readers.

And what I want this format to be is to have only structural / logical / semantic way of storing information. The same way that is followed by fb2 ebook format creators. If you didn't catch my idea, just ask me to do it more profound. I would love to listen to your ideas.

[noomorph]

May I return your attention to this question? @soshial

In fact, I need to put at least 2-3 word forms for almost every word (noun cases, verb conjugation, etc.).

E.g.:

• pes (sg. gen.: psa, pl. nom.: psove/psi)
• dati (2p.sg.pr.t.: dadeš / daš, 1p.sg.aor.: dadoh).

So, sometimes I might even have double equivalent forms.

What is the structured way to keep such grammatical info in XDXF? I sincerely don't like the idea to put it in a plain text.

[noomorph]

May I ping you one more time, @soshial ?

[soshial]

Currently, all this inflection/conjugation forms can be written only as plain-text inside dedicated grammar tag.
A good practice would be to also include these forms as keys, so that this word article "dati" would be opened when searching for "dadeš".

[noomorph]

@soshial regarding the keys – sure.

By the way, any idea how does XDXF-based software usually handle that grammar tag? I'm just wondering if I can come up with my own plain-text compliant syntax (let's say Markdown tables, etc, although I might think of something more semantical) or that's liable to break the third-party viewers. 🤔

And is there any ongoing effort to standardize that tag?