Field note
What should a portable dictionary packet contain?
A useful packet provides a human-first reader page plus machine-readable fields, value sets, missing codes, findings, review evidence, editions, a continuation checkpoint, manifest, and checksums.
Start with a script-free reader page
The primary reader file contains no JavaScript, tracking, remote assets, or form actions, so it opens as a document and prints without the working application. It carries one card per field with the label, definition, role, declared type, required flag, unit, universe, allowed values with their meanings, and the missing codes. Beside it sit the machine-readable files, the findings, the reader review evidence and the frozen editions, so an analyst can take the structured copy while a reader takes the page.
Include editable continuity separately
The project checkpoint travels in the same packet for continuity, but it is named and integrity checked separately so nobody mistakes the working file for the reader file. Import validates the schema version and the digest before it replaces anything, which means a damaged or edited checkpoint is refused outright rather than half applied. Keep the packet together: the reader page explains the dataset, and the checkpoint is what lets somebody carry on editing it.
Checksums detect modification, not authorship
The manifest and the SHA-256 list record what was in the packet when it left you, so a recipient can tell whether a file changed afterwards. They cannot prove who created, reviewed or approved anything, and they are not signatures. A packet is a formatted account of authored documentation, not an assurance about the dataset it describes.
Worked example from the sample project
Export the packet from the sample and open the reader page with the studio closed. It is a single self-contained HTML document with no script, no tracking, no remote asset and no form action: one card per field carrying the label, the definition, the role and type, the required flag, the unit, the universe, the allowed values with their meanings and the missing codes. It opens as a document and it prints.
Beside it the packet carries the machine-readable material, the findings, the review evidence, the editions, a continuation checkpoint, a manifest and a SHA-256 list. The checkpoint is deliberately named and integrity checked so nobody mistakes the continuity file for the reader file, and so an import replaces a project only after validation.
What this does not do
- Checksums detect later modification; they do not prove authorship, review or approval.
- The packet certifies nothing about the dataset it describes.
- A passive file cannot stop a recipient from editing their copy.
Do this in the studio
Send the reader page first and the machine-readable files second.
- Open the Handoff packet station and export the full set.
- Open the reader page yourself before sending it.
- Keep the manifest and checksum list with the files.
Open the studio at the Handoff packet station