display variant with "variant of" label

[Michael Galant]

Hi.

Is there way for variants to be displayed with a "variant of" label?  I am thinking of the lexicon edit view as well as the dictionary preview view.

Thank you,
Mike

[Beth-docs Bryson]

Mike, what version of FLEx are you using?  It probably doesn’t matter for these questions, but it could.

For variants, in the Dictionary Preview, they should be showing with some sort of “variant of” label by default.  That is, they will if you have assigned a Variant Type.  In Lexicon Edit, there should be a field called “Variant of”, and hopefully you have filled that in (linked it to whatever it is a variant of).  Right next to it is a field called “Variant Type”.  Definitely make sure that has a value chosen for it.  (In FW 8.3, you won’t be allowed to leave it empty—it will come up as “Unspecified Variant of” if you don’t set it to anything.  But FW 8.2.8 allows empty variant types, and that has led to confusion.)

Regarding font size, there are two areas that are relevant:

1. In the dialog you were looking at (Format/Set Up Writing Systems), you can choose the font.  If you have chosen different fonts for the two languages, those fonts may appear to be different sizes, even when set to the same point size.  That is pretty common for fonts.

2. In another dialog (Format/Styles), look for the style called “Normal” and go to the Fonts tab.  There you will see the different writing systems listed, and also a “default” from which the others inherit, if they are not set.  For each one of these you can set a size.  Normally people leave the size “Unspecified” for the specific writing systems, and just set the default one, and then all the other inherit.  But it is possible that English was set to use a different size from Spanish.

Many of us are on vacation, so there may not be many answers to questions over the next week.  I wish everyone a restful break, wherever you are.

-Beth

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[Michael Galant]

Hi, Beth.

Thanks so much for your reply.  I didn't see your reply until today - otherwise I would have answered sooner.

I am using version 8.2

I should be clear about which view I am talking about.

If I am in "lexicon edit" view, and I am looking at the "entries" pane and the "entry" pane, I do not see "variant" at all.  In the "entries" pane, the variant form shows up, but the gloss and definition do not show up, so it just looks like it's an entry that has empty gloss and definition fields.  Perhaps there is no solution for this, but it would be nice to be able to differentiate between entries that have empty fields because the info is missing and entries that have empty fields because they are variants.  It would be a nice feature for items that only appear in the dictionary as variants to be somehow marked as such in this pane.

 As for the "entry" pane, in the dictionary preview at the top, the expression "variant of" does not appear, just the standard form of which this is a vairant.  The same happens if I am in "dictionary" view.  The variant has its own place in the dictionary, but what follows the variant lacks the expression "variant of" - all that appears is the standard form.

I now see that if I pick a type of variant, the desired info (in abbrev. form) does show up.  Great!  It would be nice to be able to just have "var. of" show up, without specifying the type of variant - is that possible?

As for the font size, I went to Format/Set Up Writing Systems, and I did see that Spanish and English had different fonts, and when I made sure that they had the same font, the sizes became identical - yea!  It is strange, though, that in this menu, font size cannot be set - that would be a nice feature to have.  I do see that this can be specifed via Format/Styles - thanks so much for this information.

I figured that I would probabably not get too many replies during the holidays, but I figured I might as well ask and then just wait until I did get replies.

Thanks again, and Happy Holidays,
Mike