new: revamped HTML file
trevelyan
May 28, 2007, 03:46 AM posted in General DiscussionJust a quick update to let everyone know that we've switched to a new backend system for lesson production. There aren't any major changes, but a keen eye might notice a few minor changes that people have been requesting for a while, especially as regards the HTML file. Among these are:
* proper pinyin capitalization in the HTML/PDF files* elimination of "wide" chinese punctuation in ASCII fields
* addition of speakers to HTML files
Thanks for all of your patience as we worked these things out. Thoughts and suggestions on further improvements are always welcome.
henning
May 28, 2007, 05:59 AMtravelyan, have you checked out Carl's CSS-Version? http://pphcarl.googlepages.com/test.htm# I think it is brilliant. Would make the HTML files even better and more "on our terms". (By the way: adding the plain HTML is one of the core new V3-features for me. Thanks for those.)
trevelyan
May 28, 2007, 06:28 AM@Henning - Carl's pages are quite cool. I can't see making any changes to the existing HTML script, but perhaps we can look at hosting a conversion script in the future when we have a more robust file-download area. @Man2Toe - the advanced lessons (ZH in V2) didn't have English in the popups, so this isn't the case of a feature being removed so much as never added. There was a brief period on V3 launch where English popups were appearing in some of the advanced lessons which may be the cause of the confusion. The rationale behind the difference in presentation has to do with the diminished payoff to the student of having ALL content annotated in those texts, set against the time the Academic team needs to manually check/edit the lengthier and more diffcult annotations. When the glossary/dictionary goes back online, the best solution for making these materials more accessible to intermediate and upper-intermedia students is probably better cross-referencing between the various lesson texts and backend reference materials.
dennism
July 16, 2007, 11:45 PMAs far as: * addition of speakers to HTML files Is this just for new files? The following files among many don't have the speaker annotations. http://s3.amazonaws.com/chinesepod/0003/pdf/chinesepod_A0003.html or http://s3.amazonaws.com/chinesepod/0143/pdf/chinesepod_B0143trad.html And what do you mean by a "more robust file download area" ? Is the cloud at Amazon likely to crash? ;-)
man2toe
May 28, 2007, 04:41 AMDoes this then also include discontinuing English translations in the Advance dialogue and expansion pop-ups? If so, may we here the reasons please? If my vote means anything. I vote for one place in the website where Advance subject matter can be crossed referenced with English. Thank you Cpod.