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Old 05-20-2009, 04:06 PM   #1
Nate the great
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Proposal: Extending Epub with reference book tags

I make my own reference books in Mobipocket, and I would like to do the same in Epub. Unfortunately, the needed tags don't exist yet in the Epub spec.

I'm going to get the ball rolling by listing the three details I've noticed about Mobipocket dictionaries (if I missed one please point it out):

1, an entry in an ebook's metada that indicates it's a dictionary (necessary?);

2, two more entries in the OPF that indicate the input and output languages;

3, the set of tags in the content that define the parts of a data entry (idx:entry, idxrth, idx:key, idx:short, idx:gramgrp, idx:subentry, idx:string, idx:ext-subentry). You can find more about them here.


I don't think all of the tags are necessary. Here is what I would like to propose as a starting point. Also, I'm going to be shameless and simply copy the function and attributes of the existing Mobipocket tags. I've changed some of the names so they are easier to understand.

So, what do you think?
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Old 05-20-2009, 05:12 PM   #2
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What was wrong with idx (index) for these entries? It would make more sense the idpf I believe.

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Old 05-20-2009, 05:42 PM   #3
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Why not use an existing XML-based dictionary format? Perhaps XDFX. The ePub standard has the concept of XML in-line islands, but I don't have a clear idea of what it takes to produce a dictionary that is also a valid ePub document.
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Old 05-20-2009, 05:57 PM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wallcraft View Post
Why not use an existing XML-based dictionary format? Perhaps XDFX. The ePub standard has the concept of XML in-line islands, but I don't have a clear idea of what it takes to produce a dictionary that is also a valid ePub document.
A quick look shows that it is mostly compatible with XHTML already. See http://xdxf.revdanica.com/drafts/vis...-draft-028.txt

It has the advantages of already have dictionaries available. Perhaps there isn't much work to do to make everything work together.

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Old 05-20-2009, 07:15 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DaleDe View Post
What was wrong with idx (index) for these entries? It would make more sense the idpf I believe.

Dale
Ah, is that what "idx" stands for? That makes sense. I'd prefer to use something that will add meaning and be easier to identify. I'm using "idpf" as a placeholder.
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Old 05-20-2009, 10:45 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wallcraft View Post
Why not use an existing XML-based dictionary format? Perhaps XDFX. The ePub standard has the concept of XML in-line islands, but I don't have a clear idea of what it takes to produce a dictionary that is also a valid ePub document.
Interesting.

One problem is that XFDX isn't a standard yet. It's still in draft form. How can we adhere to something that will change in the near future? Also, I don't like that an article is identified by <ar> tag, and a keyword is identified by <k> tag. I'd prefer to spell out the whole word so it can be read easier.

Here is a pretty good source of information on XML.
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Old 05-21-2009, 11:55 AM   #7
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One thing I forgot to add last night was that while I don't want to adopt XFXD, I think that it's a good source of ideas. My original goal for this project was to add the tags I wanted to use right now. I've since realized that it might be better to include a larger set of tags so they can be used for more purposes. This lessens the chance that the extension will need to be revised in the future.
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Old 05-21-2009, 12:02 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nate the great View Post
Interesting.

One problem is that XFDX isn't a standard yet. It's still in draft form. How can we adhere to something that will change in the near future? Also, I don't like that an article is identified by <ar> tag, and a keyword is identified by <k> tag. I'd prefer to spell out the whole word so it can be read easier.

Here is a pretty good source of information on XML.
A agree with meaningful tag but short is preferred if you have to type it in. Perhaps you should input to XFDX, after all it is still in draft form.

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Old 05-21-2009, 12:21 PM   #9
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I don't know enough about how mobi/ePub work, nor how the dictionary function in mobi works - but grateful that someone is taking this on-board, if not for now then for the future.

Thanks....
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Old 05-21-2009, 10:37 PM   #10
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Here is my next working set of tags:

Quote:
<idpf:article> </idpf:article> - required; root
<idpf:title> </idpf:title> - required; must be first in article element
<idpf:keyword> </idpf:keyword> - optional; can be nested inside any tag
<idpf:stub> </idpf:stub> - optional; part of article shown in a pop up window; can be anywhere
<idpf:entry> </idpf:entry> - required; has optional name attribute
<idpf:subentry> </idpf:subentry> - optional; has optional name attribute; must be inside entry or subentry
<idpf:data> </idpf:data> - required; has optional name attribute; has required type attribute: number, text, image, link, graph, (table?); must be inside entry or subentry
I wrote them with this page in mind. It's not the most complex article; but it's up there. Note: XML is only for the data, not the formatting.
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Old 05-22-2009, 12:50 AM   #11
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MS Reader dictionary format

Since MS Reader also does dictionaries (and nicely, too), I was curious what sort of markup Reader used. I downloaded the Dictionary Authoring Kit from here: http://www.microsoft.com/reader/deve...loads/dak.aspx

It is a self extracting archive, so I just unzipped it and in the Documentation folder, found "dak.chm". It seems that Microsoft uses a subset of TEI tags for Reader dictionaries. Very interesting that they used an existing standard.

I wonder if this existing method would be good to incorporate into epub, rather than reinventing the wheel? Of course, regardless of what method is used, we still need to wait until reading software supports dictionary lookup.

Here is a sample entry that I pasted from the "dak.chm" file:

Code:
Sample Dictionary Fragment
A typical EBDICT dictionary fragment might look like this:

<tei-ms:text>
 <tei-ms:body>
  <tei-ms:div0>
   <tei-ms:div1>
    <tei-ms:div2>
     <tei-ms:entry>
      <tei-ms:form>
       <tei-ms:orth>dictionary</tei-ms:orth>
       <tei-ms:syll>dic|tion|ar|y</tei-ms:syll>
      </tei-ms:form>
      <tei-ms:gramGrp><tei-ms:pos>n</tei-ms:pos></tei-ms:gramGrp>
      <tei-ms:sense n="1">
       <tei-ms:def>
       A reference book that contains words listed in alphabetical order and gives explanations of their meanings, often with additional information about grammar, pronunciation, and etymology.
       </tei-ms:def>
      </tei-ms:sense>
      <tei-ms:sense n="2">
       <tei-ms:def>
       A foreign-language reference book of words: a reference book that gives equivalents of words and phrases in two or more languages, often with translations from each language to the other in separate sections.
       </tei-ms:def>
       <tei-ms:eg>A Spanish-English dictionary</tei-ms:eg>
      </tei-ms:sense>
     </tei-ms:entry>
    </tei-ms:div2>
   </tei-ms:div1>
  </tei-ms:div0>
 </tei-ms:body>
</tei-ms:text> 

where:

<tei-ms:entry> delimits an entry 
<tei-ms:orth> gives the orthographic (written) form of the headword 
<tei-ms:syll> gives the syllabification 
<tei-ms:pos> specifies the part of speech (in this case, a noun) 
<tei-ms:sense> gives information about a particular sense of the word 
<tei-ms:def> gives the definition of the word in that sense 
<tei-ms:eg> gives an example of the usage of the word in that sense
I hope that the folks at IDPF are working on some type of dictionary format for epub. I commented last year over on Teleread that I thought dictionary support was something that was badly needed in epub.
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Old 05-27-2009, 12:46 PM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jgray View Post
I wonder if this existing method would be good to incorporate into epub, rather than reinventing the wheel? Of course, regardless of what method is used, we still need to wait until reading software supports dictionary lookup.

I hope that the folks at IDPF are working on some type of dictionary format for epub. I commented last year over on Teleread that I thought dictionary support was something that was badly needed in epub.
I don't think the MSReader tags should be adopted, but you do have a good point. I'm now leaning towards recommending the adoption of XFXD tags as an extension to Epub. What does everyone think?
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Old 05-27-2009, 07:15 PM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nate the great View Post
I don't think the MSReader tags should be adopted, but you do have a good point. I'm now leaning towards recommending the adoption of XFXD tags as an extension to Epub. What does everyone think?
I wasn't saying that the MS tags should be used specifically. However, since MS based their tags on TEI, I was wondering if IDPF couldn't do the same? If not TEI, then some other existing standard. Since epub is already based on existing standards, this would make more sense than starting from scratch for dictionary support.
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Old 05-27-2009, 07:16 PM   #14
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BTW, do you have a link to some info about XFXD. Google isn't being helpful.
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Old 05-27-2009, 07:22 PM   #15
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Wallcraft posted a link early in the thread:
http://xdxf.revdanica.com/

I got the letter order wrong.
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