Dictionary in Confluence for technical terms
Asked by MJP:

Hello!

I am looking for a solution to integrate a **dictionary** into CONFLUENCE.

We have *a few hundred technical terms*. Those are very special internal terms, so I can not use a common dictionary that can be found anywhere on the web.

At the moment i use a simple table on a Confluence page to provide those translations to our staff.

Problem is:

- Automatic sorting (A-Z) is not possible in EDIT-Mode, User has to find the correct line to fill in new words manually.

- Long list does not perform well in Confluence.

**Do you use Confluence to display a dictionary in your business?**

Do you have a**better solution** than a simple list?

External application displayed in Confluence? CSV-Lists? SQL? Anything else?


Answers:
author: Andrew Drury
body: The Add-On isn't available for Confluence Cloud, and even if it were, it costs.

A year or so ago I was looking up how to create a Glossary and there was good advice in the Confluence online documentation - it involved using Anchors, from memory. I can't find any similar supportive suggestions now.

Is that because Atlassian wants to push users towards a paid-for solution?! That wouldn't be good..........

Maybe I'm just missing the advice in the online docs. If so, I'd be grateful if someone were to point me in the right direction.

thx


author: Anis Othman
body: Yet now there is a completely new add-on Glossary, [](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/fr.spectrumgroupe.confluence.plugins.glossary "Glossary add-on")<https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/fr.spectrumgroupe.confluence.plugins.glossary>

It's easy to use and it lets you manage thousands of terms and their definitions inside a smart wiki page tree. Use it to add new letters, create terms and use live-search to quickly find a specific term.

<br />

[](http://lab.spectrumgroupe.fr/confluence/display/SBD/Glossary+user+guide)<http://lab.spectrumgroupe.fr/confluence/display/SBD/Glossary+user+guide>


author: Stephen Deutsch
body: We have a separate space that contains our glossary (similar to what Kay described), with one page for each letter, and then terms under each letter. We then included the definition within an excerpt macro.

Looking at this question, I wondered how I could duplicate the functionality of the Explainer plugin for free, so I wrote this user macro, which I called excerpt-tooltip (NOTE - Requires Confluence 5.0+):

```
## @param space:title=Space|type=string|required=true|desc=enter space key## @param page:title=Page|type=string|required=true|desc=enter page to extract data from&lt;style&gt;.tipsy-inner {max-width: 400px !important;text-align: left !important;}&lt;/style&gt;&lt;script type="text/javascript"&gt;AJS.$(document).ready(function(){	AJS.$('.excerpttip').filter(function() {    	return AJS.$(this).offset().left &gt;= AJS.$(window).width() / 2;		})		.tooltip({ html:true, gravity: 'e' });	AJS.$('.excerpttip').filter(function() {    	return AJS.$(this).offset().left &lt; AJS.$(window).width() / 2;		})		.tooltip({ html:true, gravity: 'w' });});&lt;/script&gt;&lt;a id="tooltip-$parampage" class="excerpttip" style="text-decoration:none; border-bottom:2px dotted;" title='$action.getHelper().renderConfluenceMacro("{excerpt-include:$paramspace:$parampage}")'&gt;$parampage&lt;/a&gt;
```

For example, if there is a page in the space with the key "GLOSSARY" called "Technical Term", this macro will insert the text "Technical Term" into the page, and when you put your mouse over it, you will see the text of the definition that is defined within the excerpt macro on the "Technical Term" page.

Edit: Fixed bug where tooltip would go off the right side of the screen.

comments: author: Josch Bencke
body: Sounds neat,mhow does it look on the performance side, esp. On mobile devices and netbooks ?


author: Stephen Deutsch
body: The performance shouldn't be any different than putting an {extract-include} macro into a page. I think it would be fine on a netbook. On a mobile device, I don't think you could use this, as it requires you to hover the mouse over the term, but I did not test it.


author: Stephen Deutsch
body: I updated the code so that it uses the confluence page selector.

```
## @param page:title=Page|type=confluence-content|required=true|desc=enter page to extract data from#foreach ($p in $parampage.split(":"))	#set ($pagename = $p)#end&lt;style&gt;.tipsy-inner {max-width: 400px !important;text-align: left !important;}&lt;/style&gt;&lt;script type="text/javascript"&gt;AJS.$(document).ready(function(){	AJS.$('.excerpttip').filter(function() {    	return AJS.$(this).offset().left &gt;= AJS.$(window).width() / 2;		})		.tooltip({ html:true, gravity: 'e' });	AJS.$('.excerpttip').filter(function() {    	return AJS.$(this).offset().left &lt; AJS.$(window).width() / 2;		})		.tooltip({ html:true, gravity: 'w' });});&lt;/script&gt;&lt;a class="excerpttip" style="text-decoration:none; border-bottom:2px dotted;" title='$action.getHelper().renderConfluenceMacro("{excerpt-include:$parampage}")'&gt;$pagename&lt;/a&gt;
```

You can choose whichever version works best for your needs.


author: Wouter Veeken
body: This is great, but for some reason it doesn't want to properly render inline. Example:

* Input: This is a sentence with the term \<your-macro\> in it.
* Result: This is a sentence with the term  
  \<your-macro\>  
  in it.

Any idea why that might be? It looks fine in preview, by the way!


author: Mark Symons
body: Would this plugin be the sort of thing that could help?  

[Explainer for Confluence](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.hgh.explainer-for-confluence)

It's cheap but I see that it only supports Confluence 4.3 - 5.1.3. So you might want to contact the plugin's support email to check about later versions of Confluence.


author: Kay Brown
body: I would create a separate page for each letter of the alphabet. Display all the pages as children on the parent page. It would be easy to find, add and edit terms.

Regards,

Kay

comments: author: Josch Bencke
body: "Explainermakro sounds best, i think, but using your approach, my favourite is following: use templates + addpagemacro to set up a Glossary page and create one child per term. Then set up the glossary page like thisAddpage "create new definition"A-z macro + children macro ( displays all children,grouped by a-z), maybe even showing excerptsTemplate for a glossary entryExcerpt macro: short definitionLong definition follows


author: Lev Sturmer
body: Hi Gents,

Excuse me for stupid question; how do I add this macro to the Wiki? Should I have admin access, or I just can add it somehow as a simple user?

I'm familiar with excerpt macros, but how do I build this custom macro?

Regards,  
Lev

comments: author: Steven F Behnke
body: This is a late answer, but Confluence for Server allows you to define custom User Macros, leveraging custom HTML, CSS, JS, and Velocity.


author: Mick Davidson
body: MJP,

how about embedding an Excel file using the Excel macro? That way you'd have all the benefits of using an Excel spreadsheet, which you can then edit without leaving Confluence.

Cheers.