help with Configure Dictionary & Styles

[Paul Unger]

I've come upon something in Configure Dictionary that I need some help with.

I'm trying to make a Character Style for Scientific Name--something to set it off from other italic text (e.g., Example). I Added a style and made the font Single Underline, Italic. Worked great! Unfortunately, it applies to the Surrounding context, not just the Content...

I have made a number of adjustments to Surrounding context, particularly the Before field. I found that where there were a number of elements in an entry, the entry was not easy to read because there was no separation between different elements. I have added punctuation--usually a semi-colon--in the Before slot to separate an element from what precedes it (it doesn't work to put it in the After slot, because if the element in question ends the entry, there's a dangling piece of punctuation at the end of the entry...) But now the semi-colon in the Before slot of Scientific Name is also italic. Looks a bit goofy.

So, my question: is there a way to make a Style apply to the Content only, and not to the Surrounding context?

Thanks for any suggestions,

Paul

[Robert Hedinger]

I have struggled with something like this at some point. Here is what worked for me.

 

Assuming you export the dictionary to LibreOffice, Instead of configuring it in FLEx, tweak it in LibO. After exporting, go to Character styles, put the cursor into one of the scientific names. In the character styles it should jump to the one for scientific name. Right click on it and select italic or whatever you need. That should change it everywhere, without changing the surrounding bits.

 

Robert

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[Hugh Paterson]

I am curious, for anyone using scientific names, do you link to the RED LIST?

The red list example: http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/21210/0

Some years ago I speculated on the potential benefits of connecting scientific names in FLEx and more generally in a lexicon to websites with species information.

http://hugh.thejourneyler.org/2012/linking-minority-language-dictionaries-to-open-data/

- Hugh

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[Paul Unger]

Thanks for the tip, Robert. I'll file that away for my next export! It'd be nice, though, if FLEx would just apply a Style to the Content and not the Surrounding Context.

Paul

[Paul Unger]

Nope. Didn't know there was such a thing. Is there a 'green' list, for non-endangered creatures? Or one for flora?

Paul

[Robert Hedinger]

I agree with you.

 

Actually, I have found that I have to change the style for tags for some other exported fields in LibO as I can’t see a way of configuring them in FLEx before exporting. The great thing is that in LibO every bit has its own character style and so it is easy to tweak the formatting for the final document. However, if you have to repeat the export you have to repeat these tweaks. I have done it many times, so it would be really nice if this could be improved in FLEx. Something for the wish list.

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[Beth Bryson]

Hi, Paul.

I looked to see what we have in Jira about this.  The issue I am aware of is this one:

https://jira.sil.org/browse/LT-12046  Surrounding context always uses English style

But that describes different behavior than what you are seeing.  That issue actually requests that the surrounding context match what is inside of it, which is the opposite of what you are asking (and describes the problem you are seeing).

We are in the middle of a pause on working on the "Configure Dictionary" project on FLEx, but we hope to get back to it in a few weeks.  Issues like this are directly related to what we are doing in that work.  I will try to look at this more closely and see what we can do--it may be that we need to allow configuration possibilities for the surrounding context specifically.

It would be helpful to know what others think on this issue as well.

Thanks for your input.

-Beth

[Paul Unger]

Thanks for giving us more 'context,' Beth. ;-) I'll add this to the discussion: If a Configure Dictionary item is 'embedded' in / a sub-item of a higher level item, you can define Surrounding Context at the higher level and avoid the application of the lower level item's Style to Surrounding context. Take, for example, Example, which is a sub-entry to Examples. Example has a Character Style called 'Dictionary-Vernacular' with Font Attributes of Italic. However, because I'm able to assign 'Surrounding context' parameters at the higher Examples level, the Dictionary-Vernacular style associated with Example does not affect the Surrounding context.

Obviously, it wouldn't be very elegant to have every single item 'embedded' in a higher level item, but I just wanted to point out that this is one situation that does work the way I'd like it to.

Thanks for listening in,

Paul

[Natasha Warner]

I've also had problems with various details of the format settings for dictionary and reverse dictionary exports.  Usually more problems with the reverse dictionary than the regular dictionary.  i wind up solving them with a lot of editing in LibreOffice, through editing styles as others suggested in their responses.

One frustrating problem we've had is that some of the formatting settings we have so carefully set up within FLEx seem to get overridden during the export process.  We set Grammar Note to a style that we define as 10 point font, but it comes out 12 point.  We double check that we really set it to 10 point, Etc.  (It's not just Grammar Note.)  This is fixable within Libre Office/Open Office, by right-clicking and editing the style, but it's frustrating.  I think there's an option for overriding style settings during export, but we've made sure that's not turned on.

Sometimes global search-and-replace in LibreOffice is also an efficient way to solve little formatting problems in the export, like extra spaces and problems around punctuation marks.  This stems from inconsistent use of spaces in our database over the years, not from a FLEx problem.

Good luck,
Natasha Warner

[Robert Hedinger]

What you say has also been my experience. Needs fixing in Pathway.

 

Robert

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[Hugh Paterson]

RE: Green list... well If you notice, on the linked wikipedia page [1] about the Mongolian gazelle, there is a Green Value on the redlist scale for "Least Concern". More about the categorization options can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IUCN_Red_List

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_gazelle

- Hugh

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[GregT]

I think this is the core of the Dictionary Configuration changes in Flex. The reason they don't look right in Pathway is b/c they aren't exported correctly from Flex. So our hope is that after the Flex export includes the information, we will be able to adjust the Pathway export to use it. -g