Tolkien Gateway:Meetings/2 September 2012/Transcript

From Tolkien Gateway

[2012-09-02 20:03:17] <KingAragorn> We need not hold a formal meeting as there isn't really anything to decide and there are many absent
[2012-09-02 20:03:17] <KingAragorn> What do you think of the Tengwar transcriber? How should we utilise it?
[2012-09-02 20:03:17] <KingAragorn> http://tolkienindex.net/index/User:KingAragorn
[2012-09-02 20:04:17] <Ederchil> Preferably, in a way that works.
[2012-09-02 20:05:03] <Ederchil> How does it work?
[2012-09-02 20:05:12] <Gamling> The lettering looks good - crisp and clear and easy to read.
[2012-09-02 20:05:37] <Gamling> Will it be available for editors or casual users to use?
[2012-09-02 20:05:49] <Ederchil> And will it be easy to use?
[2012-09-02 20:06:10] <KingAragorn> You can see the markup here: http://tolkienindex.net/w/index.php?title=User:KingAragorn&action=edit
[2012-09-02 20:06:35] <KingAragorn> You input Latin characters and a Javascript file will convert it into Tengwar
[2012-09-02 20:06:47] <Ederchil> Correct tengwar?
[2012-09-02 20:06:50] <KingAragorn> You can choose between two modes, classical and general-use
[2012-09-02 20:07:28] <KingAragorn> I believe it is accurate
[2012-09-02 20:07:48] <KingAragorn> Yes, Gamling, all users will be able to insert into pages
[2012-09-02 20:08:16] <Ederchil> I've tried some select words and it seems accurate
[2012-09-02 20:08:41] <Gamling> I have tried other online Tengwar transcribers with limited success; having a working one would be great and might generate more interest in Tolkien Gateway.
[2012-09-02 20:09:24] <KingAragorn> Ainaldo put it all together
[2012-09-02 20:09:28] <KingAragorn> Yep
[2012-09-02 20:10:10] <KingAragorn> Mith suggested that it should have other modes: English phonemic, English orthographic, Quenya, Sindarin phornemic, and Sindarin orthographic.
[2012-09-02 20:10:29] <Ederchil> Is that difficult to implement?
[2012-09-02 20:10:47] <Ainaldo> I verified that at least the Namárië is accurate for the first stanza, using the article on Wikipedia as a reference.
[2012-09-02 20:11:06] <Ainaldo> I am about to add the mode of Beleriand.
[2012-09-02 20:11:24] <Ainaldo> And there are internal configuration options that I haven’t exposed to the Wiki markup language yet.
[2012-09-02 20:11:35] <KingAragorn> Yeah, the extension itself can be easily updated
[2012-09-02 20:12:05] <Ainaldo> There are a lot of little configurable variations, even within each mode.
[2012-09-02 20:12:30] <Ainaldo> And if the transcriber is not accurate, the extension already provides the ability to manually state the sequence of tengwar and tehtar.
[2012-09-02 20:12:49] <Ederchil> That's interesting.
[2012-09-02 20:13:17] <Ainaldo> yanta:a;numen:a;alda:o for example.
[2012-09-02 20:16:25] <Ederchil> And to come back to the original question "how do we utilise it?"
[2012-09-02 20:16:36] <Ederchil> What ways were you suggesting?
[2012-09-02 20:17:19] <KingAragorn> I don't know
[2012-09-02 20:17:28] <KingAragorn> Should we include it in infoboxes?
[2012-09-02 20:17:30] <Ainaldo> There are a lot of opportunities. Infoboxes for words with elvish origins, for example.
[2012-09-02 20:17:41] <KingAragorn> Just the Etymology section?
[2012-09-02 20:17:48] <Ainaldo> And for the pages for letters of the elvish alphabet.
[2012-09-02 20:17:55] <Ederchil> It would be guesswork for most if not all names.
[2012-09-02 20:18:04] <Ederchil> *educated guesswork
[2012-09-02 20:18:17] <KingAragorn> Yeah, it would be very good for the Tengwar article
[2012-09-02 20:18:37] <Ainaldo> It would be educated guesswork, yes, usually not attested.
[2012-09-02 20:19:06] <Ainaldo> But there are acqually quite a few attested tengwar enscriptions of elvish words.
[2012-09-02 20:19:16] <Ederchil> KA - I don't like the current state of "download fonts or see gibberish"
[2012-09-02 20:19:23] <Ainaldo> The Durin gate for example, including three published drafts.
[2012-09-02 20:19:32] <Ederchil> The King's Letter too
[2012-09-02 20:20:09] <KingAragorn> Ederchil, yes, it would make our article sooo much better than the Wikipedia one too
[2012-09-02 20:20:37] <Ainaldo> Yeah, installing fonts is not an acceptable solution. Webfonts really open up a world of opportunity in that respect.
[2012-09-02 20:20:43] <Gamling> Where would users go to use the transcriber? Would it be posted on the Main Page?
[2012-09-02 20:21:17] <Ainaldo> I can write up documentation on how to add tengwar tags to articles.
[2012-09-02 20:21:45] <Ainaldo> I am presently working on an editor you can post on the site as well.
[2012-09-02 20:22:01] <Ainaldo> Though I do not intend to support a wide cross section of browsers for that.
[2012-09-02 20:22:19] <Ainaldo> But it should not be needed for TG’s purposes.
[2012-09-02 20:22:41] <KingAragorn> That's great!
[2012-09-02 20:22:42] <Ainaldo> If you want to see the tengwar for the word Aragorn in the General Use mode (which is suitable for Sindarin), <tengwar>aragorn</tengwar>
[2012-09-02 20:23:36] <Ainaldo> But for the ring enscription, <tengwar font="annatar">ach nazg…
[2012-09-02 20:23:54] <Ederchil> Ash...
[2012-09-02 20:23:55] <Ainaldo> Namárië: <tengwar mode="classical">Namárië…
[2012-09-02 20:24:31] <Ainaldo> It is relatively simple. You can then see it in preview to verify its accuracy.
[2012-09-02 20:24:49] <Ederchil> I like it.
[2012-09-02 20:25:08] <Ainaldo> And, failing accuracy, <tengwar encoded>numen:a;malta;long-carrier:a;short-carrier:e</tengwar>
[2012-09-02 20:25:35] <Ederchil> Can you add special diacritics manually too?
[2012-09-02 20:25:44] <Ainaldo> which?
[2012-09-02 20:25:54] <Ederchil> Like the double letter dash, or the nasal one
[2012-09-02 20:26:00] <Ederchil> If you get what I mean
[2012-09-02 20:26:05] <Ainaldo> You can, but I also do that automatically.
[2012-09-02 20:26:50] <Ainaldo> e.g., lambe:y,tilde-below
[2012-09-02 20:27:06] <Ederchil> Okay
[2012-09-02 20:27:12] <Ainaldo> but <tengwar>lly</tengwar> in general use does that automatically
[2012-09-02 20:28:05] <Ainaldo> Måns Björkman reviewed my usage of General Use for http://3rin.gs, so that’s the basis of my experience with the mode.
[2012-09-02 20:28:19] <Ederchil> link´s broken
[2012-09-02 20:28:41] <Ainaldo> http://3rin.gs/ works from here…
[2012-09-02 20:28:49] <Ainaldo> might be the comma got caught by your client
[2012-09-02 20:28:58] <Ederchil> yeag, it was the comma
[2012-09-02 20:29:11] <Ainaldo> Select elvish in the lower-left
[2012-09-02 20:34:02] <Ederchil> looks good to me
[2012-09-02 20:39:04] <Gamling> Me too
[2012-09-02 20:39:19] <Ainaldo> I should at some point expand the test suite from the attested works and produce a set of parameters that produce each of them exactly.
[2012-09-02 20:41:03] <Ainaldo> But I’m pretty sure I won’t have time. It would be far more practical to evolve it if people are interested in contributing to the open-source project, as time goes by.
[2012-09-02 20:41:21] <Ainaldo> Everything’s available https://github.com/kriskowal/tengwarjs
[2012-09-02 20:41:35] <Ainaldo> Including the specs, https://github.com/kriskowal/tengwarjs/blob/master/spec/general-use.js
[2012-09-02 20:55:25] <Ainaldo> KingAragor, early draft of the editor, *very* latest chrome only http://tale.gg:8080/editor.html
[2012-09-02 20:55:30] <Ainaldo> KingAragorn^
[2012-09-02 20:56:52] <KingAragorn> Looks good!
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[2012-09-02 22:27:48] <Ainaldo> wrt to English phonemic, English orthographic, Quenya, Sindarin phonemic, and Sindarin orthographic, those would be pretty hard.
[2012-09-02 22:28:36] <Ainaldo> to and from IPA might be relatively straightforward, but it would be a decent chunk of work and research.
[2012-09-02 22:28:50] <Ainaldo> particularly with regard to the use of H.
[2012-09-02 22:29:20] <Ainaldo> It’s just another wonderful dimension of these languages that the pronunciation sometimes shifted independently of the spelling
[2012-09-02 22:30:25] <Ainaldo> english phonemic is particularly difficult. it would necessitate finding an online data source that i can use to quickly query the IPA for english words
[2012-09-02 22:31:25] <Ainaldo> something similar i actually might be able to manage would be to grab data from elfdict.com for attested spellings and pronunciations, and language auto-recognition
[2012-09-02 22:32:05] <Ainaldo> but, just like the map of middle-earth, this is a bit of a rabbit hole. it just keeps getting deeper the closer you look at it.
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