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TSV files


Used by:
Keyman Developer and Lexical Model compiler.
Description:
A .tsv file or a tab-separated values file contains a word list. This word list is used to predict and correct words using the predictive text functionality.
Details:
A .tsv file is a plain-text file containing of tabular data. Spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets can export into TSV format. TSVs can also be programmatically generated from other data sources. For advanced users, see File Format for more details.
Distributed with lexical model:
No. This is a development file and should not be distributed.

File format

For advanced users only: this documentation is intended for users who wish to develop their own word list exporters. Most users can use existing word list exporters.

The lexical model compiler expects word lists to abide by the following tab-separated values (TSV) format:

  • the file is a UTF-8 encoded text file
  • newlines are either LF or CRLF
  • the file MAY start with the UTF-8 byte-order mark (BOM); that is, if the first three bytes of the file are EF BB BF, these will be interpreted as the BOM and will be ignored.
  • the file either consists of a comment or an entry
  • comment lines MUST start with the # character on the very first column
  • entries are one to three columns, separated by the (horizontal) tab character (U+0009)
  • column 1 (REQUIRED): the word form: can have any character except tab, CR, or LF. Surrounding whitespace characters are trimmed. Quote characters (' or ") are NOT required to surround the text and are NOT parsed in any special manner.
  • column 2 (optional): the count: a non-negative integer specifying how many times this entry has appeared in the corpus. Blank means ‘indeterminate’, and is treated as if the word exists in the corpus, but will be predicted at the lowest possible priority.
  • column 3 (optional): comment: an informative comment, ignored by this tool.

Source: build-trie.js@029fb7c8

Additional notes

Exporting a spreadsheet from Google Sheets as a TSV will produce properly formatted output.