Shawalphabet YahooGroup Archive Browser

I added some docs on how to add a Shavian transliterator to Firefox:
http://shavian.marnanel.org/index.php/Shavian:Keyboard#Firefox

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

2009/4/2 Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>:
> I added some docs on how to add a Shavian transliterator to Firefox:
> http://shavian.marnanel.org/index.php/Shavian:Keyboard#Firefox

Thank you!

I have used a bot to import the entire public domain World English
Bible into the wiki now. What other documents would people like to
see there?

Thomas

This seems to be a common problem in sites with multiple
fonts/languages. [:-?]

I was able to fix this fairly well in Wordpress by adding:
font-size-adjust: 0.62;
to the css responsible for the entry content of Wordpress posts and
pages.
Font-size-adjust adjusts all fonts so that they have the same ratio
between uppercase and lowercase letter heights.

Because this ratio differs among fonts, they can appear larger or
smaller than each other at the same font size. Here's an example
http://www.brunildo.org/test/xheight.pl
<http://www.brunildo.org/test/xheight.pl>

So to fix this in MediaWiki, you'll have to find the appropriate css and
add font-size-adjust to it with some value that looks good to you. I
don't run mediawiki anymore, so I don't know where to adjust the css.
[:(]

Or you could come up with something a lot more complicated than a single
line of css, but since you can't control what font's are on other
people's computers, the results will be inconsistent.

Oh. By the way, some browsers may not support this tag yet.


--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, dshep <dshepx@...> wrote:
>
> --- In shawalphabet@ yahoogroups. com, thomas wrote:
>
>
>
> > Do you want the Shaw text larger and not the Latin text, or is it
just as
> > good to make all the text larger together?
>
> Just the Shaw text, which in my browser (Firefox) appears rather
small.
> Everything else is fine.
>
> dshep
>

2009/4/2 Thomas Thurman <tthurman@...>:
> In my lunchbreak today I added something that's clearly been needed: homonym support.  You can mark a word as a homonym, and it will be flagged in the text so you can tag it to disambiguate it properly.

Today's lunchbreak brought two changes to the routine which does the
transliteration:

1) If the source text contains a word that isn't known, but
lowercasing the word makes it known, the Shavian text is printed in
bold (since capitals are traditionally used in the Latin alphabet for
emphasis). For example, in the line from _Androcles_:

YOU'LL be killed all right enough.

"YOU'LL" is not in the dictionary, but "you'll" is, so the
transliteration for "you'll" is printed in bold.

2) HTML entities in the source text are properly supported now.

Also added, yesterday: if you include Latin text or markup in a
lexicon entry (other than a dab, of course), it will appear in the
document as a skull and crossbones to show there's an error.

I think this is almost good enough to show to the public. This will
invite vandalism, of course, but also bring more eyes and more hands.
Meanwhile, the next big thing to do (and the only major one left
before release) is the script to produce the "hundred most wanted"
word list.

Many thanks to all of you who have been helping out, and a special
mention to Philip Newton.

T

2009/4/3 Thomas Thurman <tthurman@...>:
> Meanwhile, the next big thing to do (and the only major one left
> before release) is the script to produce the "hundred most wanted"
> word list.

Oh, I would also like to make a page which dumps the entire current
state of the lexicon automatically, so other people can use it. I was
thinking of making it a simple set of

<LATIN> <tab> <SHAVIAN>

pairs, maybe even leaving the disambiguated entries as they are with
the underscores in them.

Thomas

Thomas wrote:

> I think this is almost good enough to show to the public. This will

> invite vandalism, of course, but also bring more eyes and more hands.

> ...

Yes, I think, on all three points. Expect occasional mockery as well. But if
you include, as Wikipedia does, an undo possibility, then acts of ill will can
be quickly expunged (I'm sure you've thought of this).

Such a device/method/instrument/tool(?)--whatever the appropriate designation
might be--is certain to encourage increased interest in the Shavian alphabet,
and that has to be a good thing (besides being fun).

dshep
 

2009/4/3 dshep <dshepx@...>:
> Thomas wrote:
>
>> I think this is almost good enough to show to the public. This will
>> invite vandalism, of course, but also bring more eyes and more hands.
>> ...
>
> Yes, I think, on all three points. Expect occasional mockery as well. But if
> you include, as Wikipedia does, an undo possibility, then acts of ill will
> can
> be quickly expunged (I'm sure you've thought of this).
>
> Such a device/method/instrument/tool(?)--whatever the appropriate
> designation
> might be--is certain to encourage increased interest in the Shavian
> alphabet,
> and that has to be a good thing (besides being fun).

Good points.

Last two functions, then:

* http://shavian.marnanel.org/words -- a lexicon dump
* fixed the URLs not to have "index.php" in them (sorry to break your bookmarks)

T

Now that Thomas has provided us with an effortless way to turn standard
text into Shavian, this might be the time to ask the question--should we be
doing it? No, I do not wish to be a spoil-sport, his contribution is something
that, through its charm and ease of use, could very well attract many new
adherents to the Shaw alphabet; what I mean is, should we be concerned
with turning standard text into Shavian?

Some time ago, over a year I believe, someone in his one and only posting
asked why, if we were keen to simplify the alphabet, why shouldn't we as
well take the opportunity to simplify grammar and syntax. Putting aside for
the moment the question of hwether or not increasing the number of letters
is in fact a simplification--because of the much better sound to letter
correspondence of Shavian I believe it is--should we continue to write, for
example, 'I am, you are, he/she/it is'? The Scandinavians write 'jag/jeg är,
du är, han/hon/det/den är' (or ær); this causes them no apparent difficulty.
Why shouldn't we do the same?--well, because such divergences from the
normal look and sound uneducated, and therefore, barring some unforeseen
catastrophe, are unlikely to ever be widely accepted. Ebonics 'he be bad'
may be roundly condemned, but it is not due to lack of comprehension.

Similar upheavals have happened before in English, for example when
gender and case endings were discarded. Moreover, Shaw, I recall from
somewhere, expressed his approval for some such simplification--remember
his dislike of excessive punctuation. Remember too his recommendation
that the new alphabet he desired be a complement to, not a replacement of
the standard alphabet, and therefore the need always for an exact translation
is not necessarily imperative (or would 'encoding' be the right word?). Recall
as well his deliberate selection as speech template not RP but rather Northern
English, though today it may not be quite clear what that actually entails, apart presumably from the rejection of posh. Prime Minister Gordon Brown today
said 'I ask the nations of the world to...' using the continental vowel /a/ rather
than /ah=ahsk/. All these points, taken together, would seem to suggest a
desire on Shaw's part for a broader, more inclusive language, or pattern of
language use, that would embrace, or would be easier to be embraced by, a
greater number of people--something perhaps of interest in view of the role
today of English as the world's most important second language.  

Do I mean some form of Pidgin? No, not quite. Perhaps just less grammar,
and a plainer, simpler sentence structure--at least to begin with.

Well, just a thought, 
dshep

   

  

2009/4/3 Thomas Thurman <tthurman@...>:
> Oh, I would also like to make a page which dumps the entire current
> state of the lexicon automatically, so other people can use it.  I was
> thinking of making it a simple set of
>
>   <LATIN> <tab> <SHAVIAN>
>
> pairs, maybe even leaving the disambiguated entries as they are with
> the underscores in them.

That would indeed be awesome.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

2009/4/4 Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>:
> 2009/4/3 Thomas Thurman <tthurman@...>:
>> Oh, I would also like to make a page which dumps the entire current
>> state of the lexicon automatically, so other people can use it.  I was
>> thinking of making it a simple set of
>>
>>   <LATIN> <tab> <SHAVIAN>
>>
>> pairs, maybe even leaving the disambiguated entries as they are with
>> the underscores in them.
>
> That would indeed be awesome.

Here we go, so other people can use it in their own projects as it grows:

http://shavian.marnanel.org/words

T