DSL Card Structure

A DSL card has the following structure:

1. The headword

   The headword must be typed starting from the first position of a new line. Allowed characters: letters of alphabets, numbers, spaces, hyphens, commas and braces {} - to mark the unsorted part of the headword.

2. The card body

   The body of the card follows the headword and starts on a new line. The first character in each line of the body must be either a space (or several spaces) or a tab (or several tabs). The card body ends at the next headword, which starts a new line. The card body may end at the end of the file.

   • labels (optional)
   • translations zone
   • comments zone (optional)
   • examples zone (optional)
   • pictures or sound (optional)
   • links to Web pages (optional)

   Note: The order of zones is not fixed: you can put labels, links to Web pages and pictures anywhere in the body of the card.

If the card is too long, you can reduce the amount of text displayed on screen. Use [*] and [/*] tags to mark some parts of the card as optional: they will be displayed only in full mode. You can enclose any part of the card in [*] and [/*] tags, except the headword. ABBYY Lingvo displays optional text in a different colour.

You can insert one or several blank lines between the body of one card and the headword of the next card to make the source text more readable. Entries in the source text need not be arranged in alphabetical order. You cannot have two entries with the same headword. However, capitalization matters and "Cardigan" and "cardigan" are considered as two different headwords.