Suggestion: Copy-Paste inflectional templates

[Michael Maxwell]

(I'm hoping this is the right place to send suggestions--it doesn't seem
to be appropriate for flex-parsing, and it isn't really an error, so not
appropriate for flex-errors. But maybe there's another list I'm not
aware of? Anyway--)

I have a suggestion for something that could be helpful in FLEx: The
ability to copy-paste templates among different parts of speech.

Motivation: I have a category Noun, and a sub-category Obligatorily
Possessed Noun (a common situation). I created an inflectional template
for Noun, with several slots, one of which marks possessor agreement. I
need an *almost* identical template for Obligatorily Possessed Noun, the
*only* difference being that the possessor agreement slot is optional
with ordinary Nouns, but obligatory on Obligatorily Possessed Nouns.
While I can duplicate a template within a given part of speech (the Help
topic "Duplicate an affix template" tells how to do this), it's not
possible to copy the template from the Noun category and paste it in to
the Obligatorily Possessed Noun category.

(This isn't the only place I'd like to be able to copy-paste templates;
when I construct a template for Intransitive Verbs, I'd like to be able
to copy-paste that into Transitive Verbs, which are identical except for
needing an additional slot for the ergative affixes. And for
ditransitive verbs, the template will be nearly identical except for a
slot indicating the indirect object. And there are other categories of
verbs that differ from these in minor ways.)

Implementation: There's a pop-up menu that comes up when you right click
on various parts of an existing template; one of its menu items is
"Duplicate Affix Template". Another menu item could be added for "Copy
Affix Template". Clicking in a template could also enable the Edit |
Copy menu item in the main menu. Pasting in an appropriate location
would also need to be enabled.

It would also be nice if subcategories could simply inherit the
templates of their supercategory. For example, I have a subcategory of
Obligatorily Possessed Noun called Relational Noun, the template for
which is the same as its supercategory. I would expect a subcategory to
inherit such a template, unless I specify a different one.

Mike Maxwell

[Beth-docs Bryson]

Actually, the FLEx Parsing list is the perfect place for this.  And there is a smaller group discussing things related to this.

-Beth

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