Building a Dictionary PB
Page Contents
What is a dictionary?
A dictionary is normally understood to contain definitions for words in our own language e.g. Concise Oxford English Dictionary, but our bible study also demands we have dictionaries for original language words and “bible dictionaries” for articles about bible words or bible topics. Logos distinguishes these by Type in Library, so these would be dictionary, lexicon, and encyclopedia, respectively. bible concordance is also included.
The Personal Books feature is used to build dictionaries of each type but this wiki describes the process for formatting their source documents (*.docx).
Creating Entries with a TOC
Logos requires Table of Contents entries to be on a separate line and have its style set to a Heading style. This means that the dictionary word has to be placed above the definition, and that means we cannot replicate the format of Logos’ dictionaries.
- Create Alphabetical headings for the TOC.
- Put the dictionary word/topic on the same line as the Headword tag, making sure that the whole line is given a Heading style.
- Ensure that the content has a Normal style.
- you can create links to other entries as appropriate
- A hidden headword (with content) ensures that the last dictionary emtry is properly bounded.
Creating Entries without a TOC
- Put the Headword tags on separate lines in Heading style.
- Repeat the dictionary word/topic on the next line followed by its content in Normal style e.g.
[[@Headword:LXX]]
LXX – [[see Septuagint >> Headword:Septuagint]] - Also include a hidden headword (with content) after the last entry.
There is no Table of Contents with this formatting.
Getting Logos to recognize the Dictionary
- Set your Personal Book with the appropriate Type.
- Create Subject Heading metadata to help identify it in Collection rules e.g.
- Bible--Dictionaries
- Bible--Concordances
- Greek language--Dictionaries —> for lexicons.
- The Language should be your language, including the document language
- unless you are creating a foreign language dictionary.
- Lexicons should embed a language code in the Headword syntax (see Personal Books).
- Do not include bible milestones in the source document.
Prioritizing the PB with other Dictionaries
- Put the PB amongst your top 5 dictionaries in Library.
- Now right-click on a word in a book.
- Click Selection on one side of the Context menu
the PB should be listed under Look up on the other side if it has the same word.