I think that Eryniel put a topic for "feature requests" on Parendili. Could you maybe write it down in there?
Well, I don't see it as an optional 'feature', it's just a basic thing the dictionary has to provide.
That's interesting! I remember from the previous Omentielva that someone was trying to get the Tengwar included in the Unicode set. I have no idea what became of that.
The state of affairs from this year's Omentielva is apparently that he [Michael Everson] is still trying.
Can you tell me how I can distinguish true separate Sindarin entries from the ones where an entry occurs more than once because there is more than one translation? In this case, it's the 'srek' attribute that I could use, but is this always the case?
If it's the same entry, then the alternate form and the reference should match.
I should explain how the entries are constructed. Tolkien's translations have often variations, so one has to decide whether they're the same word or not. For example, we find:
paran 'naked, bare' PE/17:86
paran 'bald, bare' PE/17:171
paran 'smooth, shaven' RC/433
I think these three are reasonably close, so they get slammed together into one entry:
paran 'naked, bare, bald, smooth, shaven' PE/17:86,171, RC/433.
But then we also encounter something like this:
ogol 'gloom(y)' PE18:88
ogol 'bad, evil, wrong PE17:170, VT/48:32
ogol untranslated PE/17:149
'Gloomy' and 'evil' are not quite the same thing, and the untranslated gloss could be either, so there should be two entries:
ogol 'gloom(y)' PE18:88, PE/17:149
ogol 'bad, evil, wrong PE17:170, VT/48:32, PE/17:149
This is all about
external homophones so far. The procedure runs into problems when there are
internal homophones appearing on the same page:
pann (
*pand) 'courtyard' Ety/380
pann 'wide' Ety/380
These can be distinguished by the alternate form (indicating a different etymology). This may also fail, however:
lorn 'asleep' VT45:29
lorn 'quiet water, anchorage, haven, harbour' VT45:29
Here I had to alter the reference manually by including the etymology:
lorn 'asleep' VT45:29, LOR-
lorn 'quiet water, anchorage, haven, harbour' VT45:29, LUR-
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Btw, I have a question to all the others regarding listing inflected forms in the dictionary: How would you like to have it? I don't think it's sensible to have
pedo 'speak!, say!' or
cuinar 'they live' as headwords. If anything, one could make them subordinate to the entries
ped- and
cuina- in a separate column for attested usage.
It should be very helpful, however, to include the past tenses for all verbs - reconstructed, if needed - as they aren't trivial in Sindarin, and also indicative of a verb's etymology - which does belong into a helpful dictionary. Luckily, one can conveniently use the noun plural slot for that.