Shawalphabet YahooGroup Archive Browser

http://shavian.org.uk/xkcd/

For the moment, anyway.

Thomas

Far from bug-free in the current state, but playable so I can provide some
screenshots of the game:

From the fully translated tutorial:
http://media.apogean.org/img/wesnoth-3.png


Here is the campaign selection window at the current state of translation:
http://media.apogean.org/img/wesnoth-4.png


Part of the preface storyline for "A Tale of Two Brothers":
http://media.apogean.org/img/wesnoth-5.png


The beginning of the campaign "A Tale of Two Brothers":
http://media.apogean.org/img/wesnoth-6.png

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 02:51, Arc Riley <arcriley@...> wrote:
>
>
> Far from bug-free in the current state, but playable so I can provide some screenshots of the game:


That's... pretty awesome.

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

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "Thomas" <tthurman@...> wrote:
>
> I've written a gentle introduction to the Shavian alphabet,
> aimed approximately at middle-grade readers. The full text is at
> http://shavian.org.uk/learn/ , but not all the pictures have
> yet been added.

1) Thanks to dshep for his encouraging words and the typo he pointed out, which has now been fixed. Unfortunately, my reply bounced; is your "From" address invalid, or is email broken at my end?

2) I have added a quiz at the end of each lesson. For example:
http://shavian.org.uk/learn/quiz/wool-ooze/1

3) I have released the text and the code behind it under a Creative Commons licence, cc-by-nc-sa. I call this version 0.80. You can get your own copy by typing
git clone http://shavian.org.uk/learn/.git
into almost any *nix machine. Please feel free to mirror it; I'd appreciate knowing where you're doing so.

4) I have added more pictures, but there's still several left to do.

Thomas

On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 01:17, Thomas <tthurman@...> wrote:
> 3) I have released the text and the code behind it under a Creative Commons licence, cc-by-nc-sa.  I call this version 0.80.  You can get your own copy by typing
>  git clone http://shavian.org.uk/learn/.git
> into almost any *nix machine.  Please feel free to mirror it; I'd appreciate knowing where you're doing so.

I cloned it into my local machine.

Here are a couple of patches, which should apply with "git am". Note
that the second one hasn't been tested.

shavian.org doesn't currently have git installed; if I can get the
hoster to install it (or get it installed myself), I may mirror it
there.

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

--0015174757a4b8fead0475e058ca
Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="0001-Fix-typo-belived.patch"
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="0001-Fix-typo-belived.patch"
X-Attachment-Id: f_g0rrzhru0

[ Attachment content not displayed ]
--0015174757a4b8fead0475e058ca
Content-Type: application/octet-stream;
name="0002-Wrap-sys.stdout-instead-of-opening-dev-stdout.patch"
Content-Disposition: attachment;
filename="0002-Wrap-sys.stdout-instead-of-opening-dev-stdout.patch"
X-Attachment-Id: f_g0rrzvca1

[ Attachment content not displayed ]
--0015174757a4b8fead0475e058ca--

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com,
--- "Thomas" <tthurman@...> wrote:

> 1) Thanks to dshep for his encouraging words and the typo
> he pointed out, which has now been fixed. Unfortunately,
> my reply bounced; is your "From" address invalid, or is
> email broken at my end?

No, your e-mail is not broken--one of my addresses is invalid.
Last year I switched to another internet service provider, which
entailed a new address. Unfortunately, due to limited abilities on
my part, I was unable to change addresses at Yahoo groups and
was obliged to rejoin this
group as a new member. Oddly enough,
Yahoo accepted me with the same user ID, and I regularly receive
the Shawgroup postings to my new address. Still, the old address
remains there, forever bouncing. If anyone would instruct me in
some (necessarily simple) way as to how this situation could be
remedied I would be most grateful.

I shall take this opportunity to once again praise Thomas's
contribution(s). These appealing efforts of his, and the others
who have helped, could well, and for a larger, perhaps more
youthful body of recipients, instill, or for those older, rejuvenate
interest in Shavian as a useful, realistic, and moreover fun way
to write our language. Human progress has frequently occurred
as a result of playful encounter rather than as a consequence of
some pedantic exercise in what is, even with the best of intentions,
thought best--most of us would prefer when possible to be homo
ludensis rather than homo whatever-the-opposite-term could be.

However, speaking as someone guilty of pedantic arguments,
I would, at this moment of what I hope to be the beginning of a
renewal of interest in Shavian, point out a potential pitfall. Thomas
has done an admirable job in illustrating for beginners the nature
and character of the Shavian (or Read, if you prefer) letters--how
simple they are, how easy they are to learn, write, and use. And
also in passing how there is a regular system of letter pairing,
placement and construction--adding a stroke to a simple symbol
converts a lax vowel to a related tense one, for example; or
combining two letters to form a compound. What a thoroughly
sensible system!

But wait! Look at the entry for Err, or the original entry for Air:
'The letter 𐑻 is made from 𐑧 and 𐑮 written close together'. How
long will it take for some bright twelve-year-old to point out that
the sound of Egg plus
Roar does not combine to produce the
sound Err (if err is taken as it was meant to be: to rhyme with
burr or sir). Ironically Egg plus Roar is the way most Americans
would probably pronounce Err, but that's another matter. This
is not Thomas's fault; he has taken Shavian as it is and done
a good job of presenting it. It is our fault for not being able to
bring ourselves to contemplate a simple correction because,
well, because.

Oh no, not again, you will say--let the matter lie, it is not worth
the trouble. That is an argument that can be counted on to suffice
for those of us above a certain age who do not relish the thought
of inconvenience in any form. Young people, especially teenagers,
and I certainly hope this new approach will attract and stimulate
their curiosity and interest, are less likely to award such an
automatic sentiment any respect. They will only laugh at (and
ridicule) their silly
elders' obstinacy and lack of logic for defending
the indefensible.

Just consider, if a sufficient number of young people were to find
Shavian interesting, compelling, and free from obvious anomalies,
and begin to use it to some significant extent (even as a secret code
against prying eyes) then the prospect of gaining, eventually, some
measure of wider acceptance should be greatly enhanced. Change
could come. They will grow older, and carry with them the notion
that an alternative alphabet is not such a strange idea after all--it
is possible to regard life's restraints with a fresh and unafraid eye.
So, if this new and attractive graphic presentation really is a new
beginning, as it could perhaps be--a new opening to a potentially
much larger user group--now could be the time to bite the bullet,
overcome inhibitions, and correct, by reversing, Air and Err,
and while at it, Ha and Hung as well. Why not?

So there, let the groans begin----
dshep    
 

      

 

On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 09:45, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> wrote:
OK, so the mailing list apparently makes a hash of attachments. Here
they are inline:

From 1178b72b2c3f80b118ed461d708522c38941d245 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:23:02 +0200
Subject: [PATCH 1/2] Fix typo: belived

---
img/README.txt | 2 +-
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

diff --git a/img/README.txt b/img/README.txt
index f25f3ff..e5c28f8 100644
--- a/img/README.txt
+++ b/img/README.txt
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ Each .jpg file has a corresponding .url file, which contains
only the URL of the original image on flickr.com.
The copyright on all images is owned by the user who uploaded them,
whose Flickr username follows "photos/" in the image's URL.
-All images are belived to be licenced under cc-by-sa, cc-by-nc-sa,
+All images are believed to be licenced under cc-by-sa, cc-by-nc-sa,
or cc-by-nc.
No other assertion of copyright ownership is made or intended.
Note that a cc-by-nc-sa licence was agreed with the author of
--
1.6.3.2.1299.gee46c

From a50f58e4350de6852b3cbe738dcaee5eca35082e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:37:40 +0200
Subject: [PATCH 2/2] Wrap sys.stdout instead of opening /dev/stdout

Based on a recipe in c't magazine 22/2009, p. 164
(which assigned the output back to sys.stdout).

I'm not sure whether the StreamWriter objects support .close()
so I replaced those with .reset():

"Flushes and resets the codec buffers used for keeping state.

"Calling this method should ensure that the data on the output
is put into a clean state that allows appending of new fresh
data without having to rescan the whole stream to recover
state."

Not tested.
---
quiz.cgi | 6 +++---
1 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/quiz.cgi b/quiz.cgi
index 6417e6e..a36c81e 100755
--- a/quiz.cgi
+++ b/quiz.cgi
@@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ def shavianise(mapped):

form = cgi.FieldStorage()

-so = codecs.open('/dev/stdout', 'w', 'utf-8')
+so = codecs.getwriter('utf-8')(sys.stdout)

skin = codecs.open('img/skin.html', 'r' 'utf-8').read()

@@ -140,7 +140,7 @@ if answer and form.has_key('a'):
else:
location = '../..' # go to the root page
so.write('Result: 301 Correct\nLocation: %s\n\n' % (location))
- so.close()
+ so.reset()
sys.exit()
else:
wrong = 1
@@ -197,6 +197,6 @@ else:
so.write(skin % {'title': 'Quiz - Learn Shavian',
'body': body,
})
-so.close()
+so.reset()

dom1.unlink()
--
1.6.3.2.1299.gee46c


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

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 09:45, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> wrote:
> OK, so the mailing list apparently makes a hash of attachments. Here
> they are inline:

Applied. Thank you!

Thomas

You can just upload the .git to the webserver, it doesn't necessarily need
to run the git software.

> shavian.org <goog_1255442664422> doesn't currently have git installed; if
> I can get the hoster to install it (or get it installed myself), I may
> mirror it there.
>

We need a translator for "Under Two Burning Suns", a lengthy Battle for
Wesnoth campaign about a tribe of elves "in the distant future" searching
for a new home after their desert village is destroyed.

It's really a game in itself as it changes many of the norms (ie, day/night
pattern is different with 2 suns, new races, breaking from the "lord of the
rings" setting, etc) and is longer and more polished than any other campaign
I know of (week+ of play time).

233 words need to be manually translated for this, many of which are proper
names for characters in the story, in addition to a read-through (and
possibly play-through) to verify the translation and clean up any errors.
The most common errors are missing namer dots.

We're trying to get this done before the 1.8 release next month. Translator
gets her/his name in the game's credit roll.