I’ve heard that it is possible to select a semantic domain (SD), then add a series of words that belong to that SD to the FLEx database. Is this true? If so, where in the UI do I find that? All I’ve found so far is the UI for entering pieces of data pertaining to a particular entry.
Hi Kevin,
Language Forge does not have a “Collect words by Semantic Domain” task. This is something that I think would be a value feature on the future. This is on our development radar however it’s not something that is close to being released.
Thanks,
Chris
We are considering using Language Forge as a crowd-source lexical data collection tool (which I gather is one of the main use cases), and I think collection by semantic domains should be a fairly high-priority goal for the app, as that has been shown to be a very effective way of collecting lots of words (as described at rapidwords.net). The current app obviously knows about semantic domains (since you can select one from the drop-down box), so I would think that adding this functionality wouldn’t be real hard. You would need to add a data entry view where you select the semantic domain, hopefully it could show you what words are already in that domain, and then it gives you the ability to add words and glosses (like in the FLEx Collect Words tool). (There should be a better way to select a semantic domain than scrolling a huge long list, but that can be for version 2… 
)
One more thought on this: My users would see the ability to add words this way as one level of permissions lower than the Collaborator, who can change any of the data. So maybe you would want to add a level of permissions called “Word Collector” or something like that. People with this permission would be able to add words by semantic domain, but would not be able to edit all of the data in the entries.
I’m working on acquainting myself with the features of LanguageForge, and found myself searching for this same topic…regarding semantic domains. So I’ve read the posts here, and seem to have found my answer as to what LanguageForge currently can do. I also agree that a simple feature to collect words in a semantic domain, and to view words in a semantic domain, would be great for added functionality. The list of domains as assignments can be given to collaborators as a Word doc or PDF or whatnot, and the semantic domain manually selected on input, it’s still doable in that sense, but it would be nice to have that feature built in to LanguageForge if possible, especially since the word collection is something very like desirable for many people to be involved in (not just the editor that takes time to learn FLEx). It would also be nice to be able to search the semantic domains, rather than just a scrolling list. From what I can see, those things are not yet incorporated to LanguageForge, but I’ll be interested to hear updates if that is added at some point, because I also see that as being valuable. So I’ll add my post so that I can be in the conversation if it changes or there are updates at some point in the future. Thanks for the efforts to develop a tool to help with lexical data projects and collaboration, and something that is easy to use and learn. The free tools available are wonderful.
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Great suggestion. Will keep my eye on this.
Unfortunately Language Forge doesn’t have a word collection view or facility based upon semantic domain.
There is a separate project in SIL called “The Combine” that facilitates this, although I do not have information on how to use it or download it. Developers can find it on GitHub: https://github.com/sillsdev/TheCombine
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