Building the Kirrkirr indices

This section gives the final steps for getting a dictionary ready for Kirrkirr: it describes how to build the indices that Kirrkirr uses.

After you have the dictionary specification file set up, use Tools | Make index files from within Kirrkirr to make betwee one and three index files, depending on the desired functionality and the available dictionary content.

(Advanced users can perform this conversion at the command line by invoking java Kirrkirr.IndexMaker . Provide it the dictionary specification file, the dictionary xml file, and the filename to output the clk file to. You can also pass it a filename to output an index into the dictionary by gloss, which is also stored in a clk file, and a third filename which is an XML file that stores an index of semantic domains. These are used for creating an L2->L1 interface into the same dictionary data, and for the new semantic domain display. Run java Kirrkirr.IndexMaker to see the most up to date options.)

Now you should have an xml dictionary, an xml specification file, and between one and three dictionary indexes set up.

Important: In the current version of Kirrkirr, you should leave the Kirrkirr GUI using another dictionary until you have successfully created index files for the new dictionary. You will not be able to run the GUI if the selected dictionary does not have valide index files. In such cases, you need to run IndexMaker manually, or use a text editor to edit kirrkirr.properties to change the dictionary that is selected on start-up. (For the future, we'll probably change Kirrkirr to be more robust in such circumstances.)

Proceed to Selecting and Running Your New Dictionary