The Signbank lexicon service is a lexicon service plugin that makes a connection between ELAN and an instance of Signbank. Signbank is a webapplication for constructing sign language lexicons (the original Signbank: http://www.auslan.org.au/, several spin offs: https://github.com/Signbank). When ELAN is connected to a Signbank instance that is equipped with this functionality, ELAN is able to show videos of Signbank entries.
For setting up the connection, Section 2.7. Note that when your are editing the lexicon service, you need to select the type Signbank. After editing a new lexicon service, the initial data from the Signbank is downloaded immediately. This may take a while because all available media is also downloaded. The reason for this is that ELAN needs quick access to the media and this is not guaranteed if the data is requested on demand. Because this data may take a great amount of space it may be necessary to change the location of this data from the special ELAN data folder (see 1.1.2. Special ELAN data folder) to elsewhere. See below for how to do this.
It may prove necessary to change the location of cached data from the special ELAN data folder (see 1.1.2. Special ELAN data folder) to elsewhere. It can be set in the Preferences tab of . At the item 'Location of cached data' click and navigate to a new folder in a different location than the default and click Select. The X restores the default file location.
On top of the default functionality of a lexicon service the Signbank lexicon service comes with a few extras. For those extras to work tiers with a tier type that is connected to the Signbank lexicon must also have a connection to an ECV (see Section 2.6.5) from that same Signbank. If so the following functionality is available.
For a start, when right clicking an annotation of a tier with a tier type that is connected to the Signbank lexicon, there is an option in the menu. If clicked the Signbank entry corresponding to the annotation value (which is an ECV entry) is opened in a browser.
Also, when hovering over an annotation of a tier with a tier type that is connected to the Signbank lexicon, while CTRL is pressed, a video of Signbank entry corresponding to the annotation value is displayed next to annotation box.
A videos is also displayed when opening a annotation for editing, in this case selecting an ECV entry, and hovering over an ECV entry in the list.
Finally, when searching for lexicon entries in the Lexicon tab, each entry in the result has a link to the lexicon entry in the Signbank webapplication. If clicked the Signbank entry is opened in a browser.
