[sword-devel] Chinese PinYin, OSIS, SWORD and front-ends

[David Haslam]

This question is first addressed to the experts on OSIS markup, though it
will also be of interest to front-end & SWORD/JSword developers.

Suppose we had a Chinese Bible module and wanted to include inline 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin_Yin Pinyin  pronunciation markup for every
ideogram, as an aid [say] to those learning the language.  This is worth
pursuing, especially as Pinyin can be used for other languages besides
Mandarin Chinese. 

What would be the recommended method to do this?

One of my contacts wrote to me recently, 

Please take note that many Chinese words contains more than one phonetic
sound and multiple meanings, the website I used to get the thing done
(PinYin) is claiming 98% accuracy. If you have friends need to do other
Chinese PinYin Bible I would be able to explain how to overcome the
behaviour/weaknesses of the website  http://py.kdd.cc/ http://py.kdd.cc/ 

He also provided the following text file contents ... (lightly reformated)

The following Chinese characters were missing from the database of 
http://py.kdd.cc/ http://py.kdd.cc/ 

规(gui1)
矩(ju3)
争(zheng1) 
吵(chao3)
闹(nao4)
院(yuan4)
囊(nang2)
喧(xuan1)
嚷(rang3)
裳(chang2)
娃(wa1)

We've managed to overcome this by marking the missing character(s) and then
using a hard copy dictionary to get the correct HanYuPinYin. 

----

The next question is addressed to both front-end developers and SWORD engine
programmers 

One obvious way would be to have a separate SWORD module for the edition
that is enhanced with Pinyin.

Yet a more attractive idea would be to enhance the SWORD API such that
Pinyin markup could be switched on or off as required, thus providing the
possibility of only having one module to maintain.

Then each front-end could eventually be enhanced to include a menu view
option to Show/Hide Pinyin, just like they do for several other types of
inline markup such as Strongs, etc.

The method used to display the inline Pinyin could be at the discretion of
the front-end developers. They might wish to use [say] superscripts in a
different color than we use for other types of inline markup.

Finally, as there is a one-to-one correspondance between each Chinese
character and its Pinyin transliteration, this suggests the possibility that
the Pinyin lookup could be done entirely within the SWORD API, thus not
necessitating any inline OSIS markup within the module.

Do these ideas and questions make good sense?  

Yours in Christ's service,
David Haslam






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