Layout of a lexicon

There are many options for designing a lexicon layout. The main options are:

1. lexicon as a book;
2. lexicon as a card index;
3. lexicon as an electronic database.

Each of these layout forms in different media is a possible realisation of an underlying structure which is fundamentally a table.

The most convenient way to prepare a lexicon is electronically, as a database. Starting with the database, it is possible to convert the database layout automatically into a book layout, and thus have two different layouts in different media which are derived from the same lexicon.

There are a number of database programs (DBMS - Database Management Systems available).

However, as a first step, it is very convenient to use a spreadsheet program like Excel or StarCalc. There are several reasons for this. First, spreadsheet programs provide a layout format which exactly corresponds to the underlying abstract architecture of a document. Second, spreadsheet programs provide tools for automatically creating, changing, sorting, formatting tables. Third, is is a simple matter to export spreadsheet data in text format for re-formatting.

So the first lexicon draft in our language documentation procedure will be in the form of a spreadsheet table using Excel, or a similar spreadsheet system.