Moving Examples to different senses

[Susanna]

I just received this question, and thought everyone might need the
answer:

> In my dictionary I have lots of examples with translation under the wrong sense. What would be nice would be to be able to move an example bundle from one sense to another, or even to another entry similar to being able to move senses. It seems to me that this is at present not possible except by cutting and pasting. Do you think there is demand for this? I certainly would like to be able to do it.

This is possible now, but it currently requires an annoying pre-step!
1. If the target sense, doesn't yet have any example sentences, use
Insert Example in the target sense. (The target sense needs to have at
least one set of the example fields.)
2. Click on the Example field label of the example you want to move,
and drag it to the field label Example in the target sense.
3. Let the mouse go. The example should move.
4. If you had to add an empty example in (1) you will need to delete
it: Right click on the Example field label and select Delete Example.

So, it does work like moving senses, the problem is currently FLEx
requires an example set* of fields in the target sense to be the
target of the drag (*not just the single field Example). With that, it
works! Hopefully this will be improved one of these days...
-Susanna

[Robert Hedinger]

Thanks,

this is very helpful.

Robert

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Susanna" <susann...@sil.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 8:17 PM
To: "FLEx list" <flex...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [FLEx] Moving Examples to different senses

[Ronald Moe]

I'm finding that I need to move example sentences fairly frequently. So I
would vote that a simple tool "Move Example to another sense" be made a
priority. Perhaps also "Move Example to a new sense" would be helpful. But
you can always create a new sense and then move the example.
Thanks,
Ron Moe

-----Original Message-----
From: flex...@googlegroups.com [mailto:flex...@googlegroups.com] On
Behalf Of Susanna
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 10:18 PM
To: FLEx list
Subject: [FLEx] Moving Examples to different senses

[David Tuggy]

Ultimately I hope it can be done with cutting and pasting. Dragging is fine if you have both the source and the destination in view, but if you have to go hunting for the destination in the middle of a drag it is, at best, a drag. Also the ability to copy would be very useful: quite often the same example sentence beautifully illustrates the use of more than one lexeme.

—David Tuggy

[David Coward]

I am currently off line and out of real email/internet contact, but noticed this comment from David Tuggy on example sentences. My apologies up front if the discussion has gone way beyond this since I stepped off the grid. (I won’t even be able to see your responses to my comments – still I feel an additional comment is needed.)

 

I have to agree that dragging is a drag. Copying and Pasting is a far safer bet for most beginning (or aging) mouse users.

 

BUT, must we actually COPY example sentences? As a long-time Shoebox/Toolbox user, the one major bane of the SF flat file approach is the necessity to copy and paste everything into each place it is useful. I’ve always seen the main benefit of going to a “linked” system was things like example sentences would become part of our data repository (just like texts), with only ONE actual example text string stored in the database for each example sentence. All manifestations shown in the lexicon itself (and the associated translations) would actually be just pointers pointing back to the text data repository.

 

I don’t know how many times I’ve had to hunt through my Toolbox database looking for all occurrences of an example sentence I found had a typo, a word that needed updating to a newer spelling, or I found had a translation that wasn’t quite correct and needed a tweak. How much better to make the corrections in only one place; with all manifestations in the lexicon automatically showing the new form.

 

Copying always promotes data inconsistencies, because we will make edits, and we will miss some of the copies.

--David Coward

[Colin Suggett]

I concur with David's thoughts.  Linguistic discovery is a long process, and an arduous one at that. Orthographic changes are common enough and for this reason linking is often better than copying. Both are needed for lexicon examples since examples often need to be modified so they are appropriate.

 

Question: does the concordance and word list "know" about lexicon examples? If they don't, then this makes it difficult to fix mistakes or apply changes.

If and when a linguistic notebook is ever implemented, the idea of linking would likewise be a crutial need.

 

Colin