Lexical Relations and Publications

[Jack Boco]

Hello folks. This is my first post on this group so I hope I get it right! I have a question about the relationship between lexical relations and publications:

We are looking to publish a short dictionary, which is a subset of the entries in the lexicon. In the publication settings the entries we want included in the short dictionary have been chosen through the "publish entry in" field.

However, these entries in the short dictionary publication still have lexical relations with entries not in the short dictionary. I want a way of NOT including these as lexical relations in the short dictionary (i.e. to only include lexical relations with other entries also included in the short  dictionary. Is there a way to do this?

Thank you for your help with this, Jack

[Kevin Warfel]

Hello, Jack.

 

Good question. I don’t know the answer, but I want to reassure you that your post came through and that your statement of the “problem” you’re trying to solve is very clear. I hope that someone else can offer you a solution.

 

Best wishes,

 

Kevin Warfel

Associate Dictionary & Lexicography Services Coordinator

Rapid Word Collection workshop consultant

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[Beth-docs Bryson]

I'm pretty sure that if an entry is not included in a publication, then references to it will also not be included.  

What I would do to find out is just to test it.  Find an entry with a reference to something not in the publication, go to Dictionary view and choose that publication, and see if the reference shows up.

Note that there are a lot of options for Publish In.  If you exclude something at the Entry level, that is the highest level, and you don't have to fiddle with the lower level ones (sense, example, etc).

Also, in the Publication Settings section (bottom of an entry, in Lexicon Edit), the difference between "Publish Entry In" vs "Show as Headword In" is that the latter allows it to appear in references but not as a headword, whereas the former means it will not appear either in references or as a headword.  You can find this out by hovering over each of those fields and looking for the tooltip that appears (see graphics attached).

-Beth

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[Beth-docs Bryson]

Sorry, I'm also seeing that you DID test it, and you said that the lexical relations are still showing.  It may be best to communicate with FLEx_...@sil.org.  They will be able to help you figure out if you are using it as designed, and if you are, then this may be a bug, and they can record it in the bug tracking system.

Or if you want to post pictures here, others can also look at what you've done.  For instance, a picture of the Publication Settings for the two entries you are talking about (one that is included and one that is excluded), and then a picture in Dictionary view, showing that you have chosen the Short Dictionary publication, and there is an entry showing with a Lex Rel to the entry that is not included in the Short Dictionary publication.

-Beth

[Jack Boco]

Dear Beth,

Thank you for your response - I appreciate it. I attach two pictures which describe the issue. 

You can see that the two "common words" (the ones published in the short dictionary) are connected through a "entry collection" lexical relationship with each other and with a third word "unusual word" (which is only published in the long dictionary). However, in the dictionary view for the short dictionary, the unusual word still shows up in the cross reference. 

Any ideas on how to sort this? Many thanks, Jack

[Jeff Heath]

Hi Jack,

Yes, the unusual word still appears in the entries (as it should), but the question Beth is asking is whether the word still appears when you go to dictionary view. Can you please go to Dictionary view (in the Lexicon Zone) to display the dictionary preview? If it still appears there, then send us a screen shot. In that case, either the short dictionary isn't selected (I don't even remember how to do that right off hand...), or there is a bug in FieldWorks.

Jeff

[Beth-docs Bryson]

Here’s a picture of how to choose the Publication in Dictionary view:

Yes, please set this view to the Short publication, and then see if the reference appears here.

-Beth

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[Jack Boco]

Dear Beth and Jeff,

Thank you for your responses. I had previously tried to attach a screenshot of the dictionary view but it must not have come through. I attach it again here. You will see that the issue remains in dictionary view.

Kind regards, Jack

[Jeff Heath]

Hi Jack,

You had included that before, but I guess it wasn't clear to me then that that was the dictionary view (even though that was the name of the file!). So it does look like this is a FieldWorks bug. Can you please send a bug report to flexe...@sil.org, or use the "Report a problem..."  option on the Help menu from within FieldWorks?

Thanks,

Jeff

[Kevin Warfel]

Note that the address for sending bug reports has an underscore in it: flex_...@sil.org

-Kevin 

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[Jeff Heath]

Interesting. I've seen the address both ways, but if you Report a Problem... from within FLEx it says:

"Please email this report to the development team: FlexE...@sil.org" (without the underscore)

Jeff

[Jack Boco]

Thank you all for your responses. I have written to Flex to report this issue.

Jack

[Susie Locklin]

Hi all,

I'm not at my computer at the moment, but I'm pretty sure that I've had this same problem. I have words that are not supposed to show up in a my Main Dictionary, but then when I print out Main dictionary they show up as synonyms (and perhaps even variants?) of words in Main Dictionary. So if you are able to send it in a bug report and it gets fixed, it would be helpful to others as well. 

Thanks!

Susie

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[Jack Boco]

Hi Susie,

Thanks for mentioning this and I am somewhat comforted to know I'm not the only one having this difficulty! Hopefully we're able to get this bug fixed, for everyone's sake. 

Jack

[Jeff Heath]

I'm working with Jack to publish their dictionary (two years later...), and I am learning some things! First, to set the context, they have a custom dictionary configuration which seems to be based on the root-based layout, so it has a lexical entry with definition, and complex forms appear beneath the definition as indented paragraphs. Here is a portion of a sample entry, which is included in their Short Dictionary (that's their publication name in the "Publish Entry In" list):

The problem is that the last two complex forms shown in this entry (înjetim lârin̰nja and înjetu basa) are NOT included in the Short Dictionary (their publication name in the "Publish Entry In" list is Long Dictionary), so they shouldn't be showing up as minor entries under this main entry.

In the preview in Lexicon Edit, these complex forms appear in this entry, even if you filter "Publish Entry In" to just be Short Dictionary. That filter apparently decides which entries to show, but then just shows the full entry in the preview.

But if I go to the Dictionary view AND select Short Dictionary as the publication in the drop-down selector in the upper-left corner, then the dictionary shown seems to filter out the complex forms that aren't in the Short Dictionary.

Going back to the Lexicon Edit view, it still shows all of the complex forms, which is a little unfortunate - it would be nice to see in the Entry preview exactly what would be included in the current export. Although that would mean that if you select an Entry which is not included in the currently selected publication that the preview for that entry should be blank (i.e. it won't appear in this publication). I think that would be acceptable, although rather than blank, it might be preferable in the preview pane to put up maybe a grayed-out text that says "This entry will not appear in the currently selected publication". And even better, make "currently selected publication" a link to the Dictionary view, where the user can select the Publication to use.

I'm still checking to make sure that selecting the Short Dictionary publication also filters out unwanted references (like synonyms) and gets rid of homonym numbers that aren't appropriate (because some of the homonym forms aren't in the selected publication), but it's looking good so far. The biggest issue for me seems to be that the Entry preview in Lexicon Edit does not reflect the currently selected publication. Any thoughts on that?

Thanks

Jeff

[Kevin Warfel]

Jeff,

It sounds like you are experiencing the phenomenon "Lexicon Edit is unaware of the selected Publication". This is an issue that Verna and I became aware of recently as we were writing lessons for the DLS online course. As a result, there is a JIRA issue titled something like "Make Lexicon Edit aware of the selected Publication". I can't search JIRA at the moment in order to get a specific number for you, but you may be able to find it with the little I've told you. You can see if it matches your experience. Add any comments, vote for it, etc.

Kevin 

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[Jeff Heath]

Hi Kevin,

Yes, that sounds very much like the issue I'm talking about. I don't think I have access to JIRA either, so can someone with access please connect that issue with this post? I especially would appreciate noting my suggestions for how to display empty entries (ones that aren't in the current publication).

Thanks,

Jeff

On Wednesday, April 29, 2026 at 10:55:37 AM UTC-4 Kevin Warfel wrote:

Jeff,

It sounds like you are experiencing the phenomenon "Lexicon Edit is unaware of the selected Publication". This is an issue that Verna and I became aware of recently as we were writing lessons for the DLS online course. As a result, there is a JIRA issue titled something like "Make Lexicon Edit aware of the selected Publication". I can't search JIRA at the moment in order to get a specific number for you, but you may be able to find it with the little I've told you. You can see if it matches your experience. Add any comments, vote for it, etc.

Kevin 

On Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 10:42 AM 'Jeff Heath' wrote:

[Ann Bush]

The title of the issue is ”Make Preview in Lexicon Edit aware of current publication choice” and the issue is LT-11746.  Jeff, you do have access to Jira.  Your ID is jeff_heath and you were on Jira last March.  The url is https://jira.sil.org/.  If you have problems with it, let me know and I’ll try to get things fixed.

Ann

 

 

From: 'Jeff Heath' via FLEx list <flex...@googlegroups.com>

Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2026 10:17 AM
To: FLEx list <flex...@googlegroups.com>

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[Jeff Heath]

OK, I posted an update to that JIRA issue (had to re-open it...).

Jeff