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Automatically link terms in LM to glossary

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1 Description

1.1 Original Proposal

As of now, it is very time consuming to link the terms of a learning module to their counterparts in the glossary. If this could be done automatically, it would be much quicker to provide working glossaries (in our case: we would then really use glossaries).

The following settings should be defined in the learning module:
  • glossary to use
  • the number of appearances to link (meaning: up to x appearances of the term are linked, the following appearances are not linked any more to improve readability)
  • the maximum number of glossary links on a single page. If this number is exceeded, ILIAS stopps to create more links and continues with the next page. (improves readability)

By pressing a button, ILIAS goes through all pages and creates glossary links. To improve readability,
  • ILIAS does not create more links for a specific term than [appearance maximum].
  • ILIAS does not create more links on a specific page than [max links per page].

1.2 Funded Feature for 4.4

It is possible to define a list of glossaries, that should automatically be linked with a learning module. The links are created, when content is being saved. Links are only created, if the string is 100% identical with a glossary term. Strings are limited by space, ".", ";", ",", ":", """, "'", "!", "?", "(" or ")". The number of links created per page is not limited.

2 Status

3 Additional Information

  • If you want to know more about this feature, its implementation or funding, please contact: killing (at) leifos.de

4 Discussion

Florian Suittenpointner, 08-01-2010
There are some more issues to be discussed:
  • What about grammatical derivatives of a word? Even in English, which is very simple in that, there are plural forms of words that would have to be identified by ILIAS, otherwise the feature would make much less sense. In other languages, it is even harder because also cases of a word have special endings or even the root of a word changes when writing the plural form (and I don't really dare thinking of languages like Chinese). There are two conceivable ways to realize that:
    • Fully Automated solution: Words only partially consistent with the Glossary term are also captured by that linking mechanism. We could predefine a number of characters that have to be consistent or even provide a corresponding setting for the author.
    • Partially automated solution: By some new feature within Glossaries, a synonyms support is realized, also covering grammatically modified forms of a word. This way, an author would have to define synonyms.
  • Which Glossary is supposed to be used automatically linking terms in Learning Module? There are two conceivable ways to realize that:
    • Fully Automated solution: As soon as Glossary terms are created in a Learning Module, a Glossary is automatically created in order to contain them.
    • Partially automated solution: An existing Glossary is selected by a new option as the default Glossary of a specific Learning Module, so the terms are automatically created within it.

By the way, I wrote an article in the feature wiki partially covering the same topic:
Define a default Glossary for a Learning Module for automatic application of terms
Brownie, 8 Jan 2010

I am, for both aspects, in favour of the "partially automated" solution.
  • Grammatical derivatives: Linking similar words automatically could produce unwanted links. You would have to check every link target on every page every time after using the glossary linking function. If you define synonyms and grammatical derivatives in the glossary yourself, it is one time extra work when creating the glossary. However, this is gut instinct, maybe it would work fully automated, but I don't know enough about languages to have a good feeling for the fully automated way.
  • Which Glossary to use: This should be an option in the learning module because one glossary is often used for more than one LM.

The other proposed feature assumes that you use the ILIAS content editor to produce new LMs so that you "touch" all paragraphs anyway. The feature proposed here would also cover imported learning modules where you don't want to change every paragraph.

I was told that some automatic glossary linking feature already existing in ILIAS 2? Does anybody remember?
Florian Suittenpointner, 08-01-2010

Hi Brownie,
some questions/remarks:
  • What kind of import do you think about? eLAIX? Then, maybe we should also contact Harry Boldt regarding that issue, so he can insert a corresponding format ("word to be linked when the linking mechanism is used") into the eLAIX editor.
  • What happens if you imported your learning module, used the automatic linking mechanism, but later on want to add some more Glossary links? Then, you would
    • either need a feature like I proposed
    • or need a function that can discern terms already linked from those not linked because otherwise I guess it'd result in some 'impossible children' problem.

JF 29 Apr 2013: We appreciate the feature as described under "Funded Feature for 4.4". However we would like to add a checkbox in the editor panel that activates the automatic linking of the content currently being edited (and saved).

5 Implementation

The glossaries that should automatically be linked are listed in the Settings > Glossaries section. Click "Add" to add a new glossary.

Add glossaries for automatic linking.

Last edited: 17. Apr 2025, 14:59, Kunkel, Matthias [mkunkel]