This is a snapshot of my personal lexicographic database of Tlingit. I use the Mac OS X beta version of TshwaneLex for my lexicography work. The HTML version is generated by TshwaneLex with no frills. The PDF version is created through an arcane pipeline of XSL, TeXML, sed scripts, XeLaTeX, and shell scripts. I don’t recommend that the average lexicographer should try this route, but if you’re handy with LaTeX, XSL, and sed then you might find it a useful template from which to design your own.

TshwaneDJe has discounts with no publication restrictions for people using their software to create dictionaries for endangered languges. It’s a commercial product, but you get much more than what you pay for. I’ve used other free lexicographic programs and have yet to find one that suits my needs as well as TshwaneLex does.

• TshwaneLex database — Some obfuscated and probably compresed form of XML under the hood.
• HTML version — Produced by TshwaneLex with no further changes. Crude but useable.
• PDF version — Produced by my hand-hacked pipeline of crap below. This isn’t finished yet, there are still lots of small details to work out. But it’s a good example of what can be done.
  • XML output — Exported from TshwaneLex.
  • Processing script — A shell script that does the following steps.
    • TLex → TeXML — XSL stylesheet to convert from the XML output by TshwaneLex to the intermediate format of TeXML.
    • TeXML input — The result of the previous conversion, ready to be processed by TeXML.
  • Postprocessing script — Another shell script that massages and mangles XeLaTeX code that is output from TeXML.
    • Spacing fix — Sed script to fix some spacing bugs.
    • Null fix — Sed script to fix the Unicode U+2205 EMPTY SET character.
    • Root fix — Sed script to fix the Unicode U+221A SQUARE ROOT character.
  • XeLaTeX input — The result, ready for processing by XeLaTeX.
  • XeLaTeX wrapper — The wrapper file which provides all the formatting details for XeLaTeX.

See! Wasn’t that fun?