Quote:
Originally Posted by Nate the great
Actually, I was thinking of straightforward HTML for the index entry:
<a href="dictionary.html#d_somenumberX">dictionary</a><br />
It would have a corresponding link in the body of the ebook, of course. |
I see. So here is a minimalistic proposal based on the discussion so far:
1. Add metadata tags (exact tags TBD) indicating that the EPUB is a dictionary, optional "input" language (the langauage that the dictionary articles are in is indicated by dc:language element), optional reference to the index file and optional collation declaration that describes the order of terms in the dictionary.
2. Dictionary should be split in multiple sections. In addition, an index file can optionally be provided. Index file should have linear="no" attribute in the spine. If an index is provideed, it should be referenced by the metadata.
3. Each entry in the dictionary must be formatted using XHTML dl tag. The first dt tag inside dl is considered to be a primary term. Dictionary entries must go in the order specified by collation - both inside a single section and across all sections as they are referenced in the spine.
4. Index is an XHTML file (exact structure TBD) that lists the sections of the dictionary itself (as opposed to supplementary material) and only the first term for each section. That both allows for efficient search and does not bloat the index.
Peter