Including Expansion Sentences in the PDF

calkins
September 19, 2008, 04:31 PM posted in General Discussion

Hi CPod,

Is there anyway to include the expansion sentences in the transcript PDF (and HTML version)?

I find the expansion to be extremely valuable, weaving together a bit of grammar with the lesson vocabulary.

Now that we're all moving more towards "learning on the go," it'd be great to also take the expansion with our PDF (instead of having to go online to view it).

Just a suggestion.  As always, thanks for listening!
Brent

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tvan
September 19, 2008, 04:50 PM

Calkins, good idea, possibly in a separate PDF.

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andrew_c
September 19, 2008, 07:47 PM

Brent,

我支持你的建议.

Just wondering, do you just want Praxis to do it themselves, or is WLCP no longer cutting it for you?

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calkins
September 19, 2008, 08:15 PM

Hey Andrew,

I definitely still use WLCP, and love it.  I use it to create a text file of the dialogue, vocab., and expansion sentences.  Then I upload them into my iPod.  And the literal translation feature is invaluable.

Lately I've also been downloading the PDF to my Palm TX, and this is the reasoning behind wanting the expansion to be added. 

It's not a must have, but would definitely be nice to have it all in one PDF, if possible.  I'm actually surprised it hasn't been there all along...my guess is that it'd add a page, page and a half, and maybe an additional 100 kb of server space (about 100 MB per 1000 lessons...which is nothing with today's storage capacities).  Sorry, I ramble!

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andrew_c
September 19, 2008, 09:52 PM

Good point.  I find that it's not so bad to just open it in Firefox and print to PDF.  It would still be better for me if it were automatic (or if CPod just provided these documents to us directly in the first place), I just haven't been able to find free and cross-platform software  to automatically convert from XML to PDF.

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calkins
September 20, 2008, 03:29 AM

I never thought about that, but it's a great idea to create the text file then print as PDF. 

That way you can use WLCP, get the dialogue, vocabulary, and expansion sentences (with literal trans. and pinyin).  And also have more control with font sizes, adding additional text, etc.

Thanks for reminding me about the seldom-used feature of print to PDF.