Architecture

CDSL is, at heart, a source-to-display pipeline driven from GitHub. This page gives the mental model; the following pages drill into each part.

The big picture

 print scans ──┐
               │   (verification, link targets)
 source text ──┴─► change files ─► csl-orig (canonical source)
                                        │
                                        ▼
                              generation pipeline (csl-pywork)
                                        │
                    ┌───────────────────┼───────────────────┐
                    ▼                   ▼                   ▼
                 XML (SLP1)       search indices       web displays
                    │                                   (B / L / A / M)
                    ▼
            downloads, StarDict, API

Key principles

1. Canonical source lives in csl-orig. Each dictionary is a plain-text file under csl-orig/v02/{dict}/{dict}.txt.
2. No hand-edits without an audit trail. Edits go through change files; the audit copy is stored in csl-corrections. See Corrections Workflow.
3. Generation is reproducible. csl-pywork regenerates XML, indices, and displays from source. See Generation Pipeline.
4. XML validity is gating. Nothing is committed to csl-orig until it parses.

The four web displays

Every dictionary is published in four display variants, generated from csl-websanlexicon and served from parallel directories under …/{CODE}Scan/{year}/web/:

Variant	Path	What it is
Basic (B)	webtc/	Single-entry lookup — headword in, rendered entry out
List (L)	webtc1/	The hierarchical headword index beside the entry pane
Advanced (A)	webtc2/	Multi-field query — search headwords or inside entry text
Mobile (M)	mobile1/	A responsive layout for small screens

All four query a per-dictionary SQLite database (built by the generator) and share the transcoder for input/output transliteration. See Search & Display for the user-facing tour and API for the endpoints these displays call.

Repositories at a glance

Repo	Role
Per-dictionary (MWS, AP90, PWG, …)	Source + dictionary-specific assets
csl-orig	Canonical source text for all dictionaries
csl-pywork	Generation/build tooling (generate_dict.sh, make_xml.py)
csl-corrections	Audit-trail change files
csl-websanlexicon	Web/display assets used by generation
csl-apidev	API development
csl-standards	Shared conventions/standards

Full map: Repositories.