#+title: ~org-conlang~ design
#+author: Lucien Cartier-Tilet
#+email: lucien@phundrak.com

* Representing Dictionaries in org-mode
The way I have always been writing dictionaries in org-mode was to
write a list of words in a dedicated heading in their language’s
dedicated file. But I believe this is not how it should be done.
Instead, only one file should act as my database in which I will store
as many words as needed.

The location of the dictionary must be presented with

* Word links
An issue I was facing when working on the initial drafts of
~org-conlang~ was how to link two words together. The answer:
[[file:./ol-conlang.el][ol-conlang]]. Words can be first categorized by language, and then they
can be stored individually. This would make URIs look something like
~language/word~. This is necessary in case two languages both have a
word spelled the same way, such as English and Mbabaram /dog/ --- which
funnily enough both mean the same thing.

To specify to org-mode these are custom links, they need to have a
dedicated prefix, ~conlang~. To make it more cohesive, I decided to
separate the name of the language and the word itself with a colon as
well. Thus, the link towards the English word /dog/ is
~[[conlang:english:dog]]~.