Background of this question
I've got the idea of creating a math dictionary with LaTeX for quite a while now. My native language is German and I write a lot of blog articles about algorithms and a few about mathematics. The algorithm articles are in English most of the time, because I think I can describe the ideas well. This is easy for datastructures and algorithms as the English words are often used in German in this area, too. (Or at least the English ones are well-known.)
But I write my math articles most of the time in English. There are simple problems like "how do I call the x values where a function is zero in English" (root). But they are hard to look up. There are good English dictionaries for "common" English and some online dictionaries are also quite good for common English (dict.leo.org). But when it comes to math, I think the situation could be better.
What I want to do
I would like to start writing an open source dictionary that helps mathematicians to translate terms from German to English and vice versa. (I hope that people would contribute to this dictionary after they had a hard time finding the translation of a term.)
I think such a dictionary should have
- one part sorted by English words to look up the German ones
- one part sorted by German words to look up the English ones
Every entry should have a formal description of the term, possibly the area (Topology, Analytics, Numerical mathematics, ...) and how it is pronounced in the language you look up.
So my entries could look like this:
\entry{Formal description}{area}{english description}{german description}{english pronounciation}{german pronounciation}
\entry{$\Set{x | f(x) = 0}$}{Analytics}{Root of a function}{Nullstelle einer Funktion}{}{}
\entry{$x^n$}{Analytics}{}{}{\SortKey{AAABasicTerms}$x$ raised to the power of $n$}{\SortKey{AAABasicTerms}$x$ hoch $n$}
Similar projects
- TshwaneLex→XeLaTeX: A dictionary for Tlingit
- Multilingual Dictionary: Looks very nice, because of good images. Images might also be interesting for my project. (related question) - but there seems to be no code online :-(
- German-English mathematics dictionary. (1960) (link to pdf is on the left side): This one is extraordinary big, as it is only a scan.
- mathdict.chitanka.info: Nice little online dictionary. I think this might help. But a mathematical description would still be nice.
- A similar online approach
Question
My question is quite open. I've written this to get some ideas what I could do / try or who I could ask.
I don't want to break the StackExchange rules, so the question is:
Is there an environment / document class for dictionaries?
But please feel free to give any idea you have for this in the comments (or an answer if your ideas get longer).
glossaries
package's samples directory there's a file calledsample-langdict.tex
that has French to English and English to French lists, which you might be able to use as a starting point.Languages
menu, I change the language (english:"Zero of a function", deutsh:"Nullstelle").