Digitally publish and update dictionary regularly - best practice

I was thrilled to hear that LF is being actively developed again, however, I am not sure if LF can do what we need. I was wondering if somebody here has good ideas for a best practice.

We want people to contribute to the dictionary but we also want changes to be accessible rather quickly because there will never be a hard copy publication anyway. Ideally, the LF dictionary-in-progress would be accessible via a website plus we would have a DAB dictionary app that is regularly updated by exporting from Fieldworks. The latter is already possible because of the link between LF and Flex, and between Flex and DAB. Is it however possible to create a website that draws on the LF data to update in real time? As soon as entries are edited in LF that can we visible on that website, or at least after a manual update (which should require only a few clicks)?

Dear Rhina,

Thank you for taking the time to post. The digital publishing process is still a manual one, unfortunately. What you described is accurate: manual publishing to Webonary and/or DAB require multiple steps after you have declared an entry to be of publishable quality. Webonary is planning some fixes that will be coming down the road to make uploading changes easier. In this way, you might find it easier to iterate quickly on changes and get those published to the Webonary website. Publishing a new version of DAB requires a number of manual steps to go from FLEx edits to App Store, as you know.

What’s interesting about your request is that I’ve recently been talking with our small team about the need for a “published view” in Language Forge that would accomplish all or part of what you are describing. We don’t have that view designed yet, but I’d like to prioritize it for next year 2022. Would you be interested in helping us to design that kind of view?

Dear Chris,

Thank you for the reply! What would this “published view” look like, would it be set up as a website (hosted by Language Depot?) with a certain domain that administrators can choose themselves?

I am not sure yet if we really start using LF, so I’d rather not agree to get involved at this point in time. If we should, however, we can certainly talk about that!

Hello @Rhina,

If implemented, we would probably just show the dictionaries at languageforge.org. There is also talk of a closer collaboration with Webonary. We are hard at work improving Language Forge, but if we are able implement such a published view, it’s probably still more than a year away.

Thanks.