Dealing with compound words

[Boyd Kelly]

Looks like quite a quiet place here....  Anyway...

I am dealing with a language that has a lot of compound words.   The language is also not well documented so there is lots of room for divergence of opinion as to whether a given word should be classifed on its own or not.   Lets take a couple of Englsh words to get a feel of what this coule be like.   Bus  stop,   workplace.  

Maybe some grammarians think it should be bustop or work place.   

In any case imagine I classify within xdxf (in a bilingual dictionary) work as a <def> (with gr sections as noun verb etc.

Any preferences or thoughts as to putting workplace in a sub <def> or work?   Or if it gets its own entry at the top level, how would it be best to reference it from the work <def>?   

Just throwing some ideas around.   Maybe if someone sees this type of question they can suggest another forum that has some more activity....