clld 11.5.5

Python library supporting the development of cross-linguistic databases

clld

The clld toolkit - a web framework for the publication of Cross-Linguistic Linked Data.

Documentation for the code base and its use is available at https://clld.readthedocs.io/en/latest/. The source for this documentation is in the docs directory.

How to cite

To cite the clld software, please cite the presentation introducing it

Forkel, R., & Bank, S. (2014, October 7). The clld toolkit. Language Comparison with Linguistic Databases: RefLex and Typological Databases, Nijmegen. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10846846

Usage

Once the initial steps (installation, bootstrapping a new project) have been done helped by the online documentation, the biggest resource to guide further development of a clld app is the wealth of existing apps. (Note: GitHub's "Used by" links - created from the dependency graph data - are really helpful here!) The following pointers are meant as a starting point to solve specific problems by perusing the code of other apps.

• Integrating language metadata from Glottolog: There's a plugin for that and here's the list of apps on GitHub using it: https://github.com/clld/clld-glottologfamily-plugin/network/dependents
• Displaying (data on) phylogenetic laguage trees: There's a plugin for that and here's the list of apps on GitHub using it: https://github.com/clld/clld-phylogeny-plugin/network/dependents
• Displaying cognacy relations between words: There's a plugin for that and here's the list of apps on GitHub using it: https://github.com/clld/clld-cognacy-plugin/network/dependents
• Displaying phoneme inventories as IPA charts: There's a plugin for that and here's the list of apps on GitHub using it: https://github.com/clld/clld-ipachart-plugin/network/dependents
• Integrating audio recordings of lexical data: There's a plugin for that and here's the list of apps on GitHub using it: https://github.com/clld/clld-audio-plugin/network/dependents
• Rendering CLDF Markdown in the context of the app: There's a plugin for that.
• Aggregating data from multiple CLDF datasets: The app serving the Intercontinental Dictionary Series does this. Very simple per-dataset metadata of the form

  {
    "id": "ids-cosgrovevoro",
    "repo": "https://github.com/intercontinental-dictionary-series/cosgrovevoro",
    "doi": "10.5281/zenodo.4280576",
    "order": 2
  }
  

  is read and used to populate the database, see https://github.com/clld/ids/blob/master/ids/scripts/initializedb.py#L38-L67
• Aggregating data from different CLDF modules: While most clld apps are concerned with just one type of data (e.g. typological questionnaires as in WALS, or wordlists as in IDS), some have a different focus (e.g. TuLaR (Tupían Language Resources)). The TuLaR app aggregates data which is curated in several datasets, bundled under a Zenodo community, see https://github.com/tupian-language-resources/tular/blob/main/tular/scripts/initializedb.py
• Using Charis SIL fonts: using SIL's Charis fonts on a clld page is simple. Here's an example https://ids.clld.org/valuesets/1-100-316
  • Include the relevant style sheet (which will pull in the font resources): https://github.com/clld/ids/blob/b2884e06a53a0a3c7a0dc27955c314869d0a31aa/ids/templates/ids.mako#L10-L12
  • Then assign the appropriate css class: https://github.com/clld/ids/blob/b2884e06a53a0a3c7a0dc27955c314869d0a31aa/ids/templates/unit/detail_html.mako#L6

See

• The CLLD project
• Online documentation
• Presentation on clld from 2014