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Choosing a glossary-type module

As of 2011, none of the glossary modules is intended as a plug-in replacement for the original glossary module already available with drupal since its humble beginnings. Each of the alternatives was designed for slightly different needs, and this page is here to help you choose which module you should probably be using, or if you should really write your own. Lexicon evolved from glossary to accomodate yet another set of requirements, and glossify started with needs similar to glossary, but evolved to a much more diverse set of features; only those relevant to glossaries should be listed here.

Left-to-right order by date of creation. Empty cells means info not yet available. Please contribute !

TODO: import “features discussion” from the 2008 glossary comparison table, which updated the very obsolete http://drupal.org/node/266511, currently unavailable for edit except to members of the Drupal doc team due to the Full HTML format, but has now become partly obsolete itself. The 2008 chart is now imported.

Feature Glossary G2 Glossify G2 Refactoring
Drupal-related (2023-05)
Maintenance Abandoned Minimal Active Postponed
Drupal 10.x No -dev Yes No
Drupal 9.x No -dev Yes No
Drupal 8.x alpha1 -dev Yes No
Drupal 7.x -dev -dev Yes Yes
Drupal 6.x Yes Yes Yes No
Drupal 5.x Yes Yes Yes No
Drupal 4.7.x Yes Yes No No
Drupal 4.6.x Yes No No No
Earlier Drupal versions Yes No No No
AJAX No Some autocompletion
Storage terms nodes, 1 type nodes (types ?) any entity
Revision support No core core
Simpletest No A few Yes
Services provided Glossary G2 Glossify G2 future
multiple glossaries on one site Yes No No Yes
RSS feeds on entries core No core (?)
RSS feeds on additional vocabularies No core core core
classify entries No core taxonomy core taxonomy core fields
commenting on entries No core core core
private editorial information No Builtin (⇐ 7), core (>= 8) Use CCK core fields
alphabar maintenance automatic manual defaults + override
remote glossaries No Yes, limited Yes
steganographic content protection No Yes
RDF information No Yes
i18n Glossary G2 Glossify G2 future
Translation template supplied Yes Yes
Multilingual blocks No
Translatable content Use i18nterms Use i18ncontent Use i18ncontent
Feature blocks Glossary G2 Glossify G2 future
Alphabar No Yes Use Views Default View
Daily Yes Yes Use Views Default View
Latest No Yes Use Views Default View
Random Yes Yes Use Views Default View
Search glossary Yes No No Yes
Content filtering Glossary G2 Glossify G2 future
Input, automatic Yes No No Yes
Input, automatic, stop list Single language No No i18n support
Input, explicit No Yes, dfn element No Yes, custom element
Output, automatic No No Yes
auto “title” on links No No Teaser / Disambiguation
Disambiguation pages n.a. Yes, limited default + override
Disambiguation targeting in links n.a. No Yes, on explicit
3rd party integration Glossary G2 Glossify G2 future
Quality Agent No No Yes
Views: basic core core + specific core + specific
Views: default views No No Yes
Wikipedia No No Yes, with i18n
Zeitgeist No No Yes
Performance Glossary G2 Glossify G2 future
memory needs/number of entries O(n) O(1) O(n) (?)
speed on small glossaries faster slower slower
speed on large glossaries slower with size remains constant slower with size
Themeing Glossary G2 Glossify G2 future
- home page core
- search form Yes core core
- node overview Yes core core
- definition fields n.a. Yes Use CCK core fields
- each feature block n.a. Yes Use Views
Specific class on glossary links Yes Yes
Implementation Templates Theme functions Templates
Developer features Glossary G2 Glossify G2 future
XML-RPC API No alphabar
latest
top
random
word of the day
No
Web services security n.a. IP-based access control
throttling
n.a.
UI module separate from Data API No No Yes

Obviously, in all cases, a “No” actually means: “roll your own”, as in all Open Source software.

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