[sword-devel] Chinese pinyin

[Matthew Patenaude]

>
>
> Matthew,
>
> Please use the mobile-devel mailing list for issues relating to the
> And-Bible.
>
> It is much more active in that mailing list than in the general list
> sword-devel.
>
> David
>

Ah, sorry about that.


> 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/
>
> ?(gui1)
> ?(ju3)
> ?(zheng1)
> ?(chao3)
> ?(nao4)
> ?(yuan4)
> ?(nang2)
> ?(xuan1)
> ?(rang3)
> ?(chang2)
> ?(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
>
>
These ideas are absolutely great. That would be such a help. However, please
bear in mind, as was mentioned earlier, there is only a one-to-one character
to pinyin correspondence for *most* Chinese characters. Many - and many
common ones - have more than one pronunciation, and more have more than one
possible tone (even where the rest of the pinyin is the same). This would
have to be carefully checked by hand. :( Maybe your contact has already done
this?

Matthew
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