The <ref xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" target="http://www.oeaw.ac.at/acdh/vle">Viennese Lexicographical Editor</ref> (VLE) is a fairly new piece of software that first came into existence as a by-product of an entirely different development activity: the creation of an interactive online learning system for university students. Thus, it was first used in a collaborative glossary editing project carried out as part of university language courses at the University of Vienna. As the tool proved to be flexible and adaptable enough, it was also used and further developed in a number of other projects collecting lexical data.