One change is easily noticeable — renewed design of the website's main sections, such as "Home", "Projects", "For authors". Older design of these sections with it's old-fashioned three-column layout and brownish color-scheme was conspicuously inconsistent with blue and violet theme of ebook and Analysis assets pages. New design features two-column layout and the same blue and violet color-scheme as in all other pages. As previously, the design is intended to be as simple and distraction-free as possible. I hope you will like it.
Another noticeable change is removal of "Blog" item from navigation; you will find "News" instead. Website's raison d'être is publishing of classics, not blogging about it. There are news and opinions about current projects and activities, but no abundance of events or points of view suitable to blog about.
Developing Classics Unlocked website I learned much about ExpressionEngine, a CMS which powers it. Now I see clearly that many architectural decisions I made in initial stages of the website's development were wrong, that the management of the website and starting of new projects is much more complicated than it should be. In order to improve management of Classics Unlocked website I will undertake in the next several weeks or months a radical reorganization of it's entire backend. Number of templates and other backend constructs will be reduced several times and starting of new projects will be as easy as adding a few new categories. No new materials will be added until these changes will be completed.
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The aims which were pursued with the release of the new version are as follows:
To make possible to use Date picker script for those who post pieces of analysis, such as
available on this page.
Titles of such pages often contain two numbers as e.g. "Verses 1-2", "Verses 3-5" and both
numbers must be considered by calculating the date (previous version of the script allowed only
one number to be contained in a title). Making possible to use of Date picker script for those
who post pieces of analysis means standardizing of setting of dates for all posts which have
titles containing numbers and that in its turn makes it possible in some future to automate setting
of dates for such posts completely via
ExpressionEngine's
extension.
With the version 2.0 of Date picker script it is possible to order by date posts which have titles containing one or two numbers. E.g. posts can be ordered as here: "Verse 528", "Verse 529-530", "Verse 531", "Verses 531-533", "Verses 533-535" etc.
This version is not compatible with the previous one. Incompatibility with the previous version has two aspects:
1. Version 2.0 accepts as an input a string containing one or two numbers in a range from 1 to 9999
(earlier version accepted string containing one number in a range from 1 to 99999).
2. For the string containing some number version 2.0 outputs later date than previous version.
Two solutions are possible here. The first is writing PHP script. The other is ordering titles by date — since the dates on which excerpts from grammars and commentaries are posted does not matter, you can order entries properly by setting dates manually so that every entry with a bigger number has later date. The latter solution not only is less complicated to achieve, but also has a serious advantage: ordering by date will be retained on search results page in cases when search outputs many results.
Calculating and formatting a date for every particular entry is dull and time-consuming job. Here comes Date picker script. Date picker script takes as input a string, parses from it a number, and for any number in a range between 1 and 99999 it picks a date which is later than any date it picks for any lesser number and earlier than any date it picks for any bigger number in that range. The dates the script picks are formatted as in ExpressionEngine's PUBLISH page. So, enter title containing number or only a number, push the button and you will get a date ready to be pasted into ExpressionEngine's PUBLISH page.
]]>The text is based on Walter Leaf's edition of Iliad. One could ask "Why Leaf's? Why not Monro and Allen's edition which is used by both Perseus and Chicago Homer?" The main reason is punctuation. Punctuation in Monro and Allen's edition is very scarse and this does not aid understanding of the work. In Leaf's edition punctuation is rich enough and Leaf is very careful about it.
The biggest change I introduced to the Leaf's edition is the change of iota adscript to
iota subscript throughout the text. Perseus and Chicago Homer websites did the same with
Monro and Allen's edition. Other changes are as follows:
Verse 8. τίς τάρ changed to τίς τ' ἄρ
Verse 65. εἴ ταρ changed to εἴ τ' ἄρ'
Verse 93. οὔ ταρ changed to οὔτ' ἄρ
Verse 123. πῶς τάρ changed to πῶς γάρ
The text is devided into smaller meaningful chunks. Each chunk is prefaced by a sentence or two sentences long synopsis which is based on the one found in Allen Rogers Benner's Selections from Homer's Iliad.
The text can be read in two modes: not scanned and scanned. By default you will see the text without scansion. If you switch to scanned mode you will see only some lines, since as yet the scansion is entered only for a handful of verses.
]]>The concept I have adopted is as follows. Someone, probably project admin, logs into
control panel of Classics Unlocked website and using special form enters the text of some classics work.
Then the server generates following sets of HTML tables:
1) Text tables
2) Scanned text tables
3) Basic Analysis tables
4) Morphology tables
5) Syntax tables
6) Dictionary tables
7) Commentary tables
8) Prosody tables
These tables I call "Container tables". They display lines of classics text and
serve as as containers into which analysis of these lines can be inserted. For example, dictionary tables serve as
containers into which dictionary articles explaining meaning of the words of one or more lines can be inserted.
Each participator in the project visits the pages containing the code of the table he needs, copies the code into clipboard, saves it as a file and opens in his favorite text editor. The code of the table contains special Classics Unlocked tags marking the places in code which can be modified and explanations which show more exactly what modification is expected. For example, one dictionary table contains such marks: <!-- {line13_word4_dictionary} [φέρων] --> <!-- {/line13_word4_dictionary} [φέρων] --> These marks contain opening tag {line13_word4_dictionary} and closing tag {/line13_word4_dictionary} which together show the place in the code where dictionary article explaining the fourth word from the verse 13 can be inserted. [φέρων] indicates the word which should be explained. After filling the places marked by Classics Unlocked tags each participator logs into Control Panel and posts the table he modified. Posting is done by entering several parameters, such as title, URL title, date, which were copied together with the code of the container table. The analysis submitted is instantly accessible for viewing and commenting.
There are pieces of analysis, such as dictionary articles, grammar paragraphs, inflection charts and explanations of the syntax of constructions, that need to be inserted into several different container tables. To enable easy finding and reuse of such pieces of analysis they are posted using special forms in Control Panel and are collected in Analysis assets section of the website. Dictionary articles and inflection charts are grouped together as "Dictionary and morphology assets"; grammar paragraphs and explanations of the syntax of constructions are grouped together as "Grammar assets".
]]>Until now the pages of the ebook were by default displayed with all navigation of the website. There was a "Site off/Site on" button on the right top corner of the screen using which the reader could choose to display the page with or without site's navigation. There are no more site's navigation and "Site off/Site on" button in ebook's pages. Instead you will see narrow menubar on top of the screen with links "CU home" (Classics Unlocked home page), "Previous page", "Next page", "Advanced search" and menus "Ebook contents", "Page contents", "Links", "Simple search".
"Links" and "Ebook contents" menus were not present in earlier version of ebook's interface. To see ebook's contents the reader was forced to open the separate page. Now ebook's contents are displayed on each page. "Links" menu on each page contains two links: one to the page in Perseus website dedicated to the same verses as the ebook's page and the second one to the home page of Chicago Homer website. Of course, it would be better to link to particular pages, but Chicago Homer website does not allow doing it.
The menubar is fixed on top of the screen, so you can use it without any scrolling of the page. Fixed menubar is especially usable for navigating within long ebook's pages: you can jump forth and back between page sections such as "Basic Analysis", "Morphology", "Dictionary" instead of scrolling the page. (Menubar will not stay fixed for users of Internet Explorer 6 or below; within these browsers the menubar is fully functional, but it will scroll with the page and lack some small nifty features, such as changing color of downward arrows. If you are using Internet Explorer, please consider upgrading to Firefox or other modern browser — you will get better and safer browsing experience.)
One more change of ebook's user interface is being considered. It seems that for such projects as compiling ebooks in Classics Unlocked format it would be a great advantage to have paragraph commenting system, such as Commentpress. Commentpress is a plugin for Wordpress blogging engine, and that means that it is not possible to use it on the non-Wordpress website without substantial rewriting of the code. As soon I will have some time available, I will try to do rewriting of Commentpress code for use with ExpressionEngine, which powers our Classics Unlocked website.
]]>During the work of compiling the idea of Classics Unlocked format is slowly taking more concrete forms. As for now, it seems that the analysis of the classics text according this format should contain following parts:
Most fundamental part is, of course, Basic Analysis, which as it seems, should in its turn contain following parts:
The work of compiling proceeds quite slowly. Project as this is essentially the project to be done by a group, where someone compiles dictionary, another one — commentary, the third — prosody, the fourth — morphology, and the most experienced in the group — Basic Analysis and Syntax. Now, the project to compile the First Book of Homer's Iliad in Classics Unlocked format is the idea and work of only one man, so be patient.
The compilation of the first pages was done by analyzing line after line all aspects mentioned above. Proceeding this way the character of the work being done constantly changes: one set of skills is applied doing Basic Analysis, another set of skills — compiling Morphology, the third — compiling Dictionary etc. This accounts for considerable loss of productivity. To increase productivity the workflow will be changed. From now the compiling will proceed in such steps:
Express your opinions on this project by commenting particular pages and participating in forums.
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