Can you see the pop-ups?

[roddy]

[pop=Zěnmeyàng / Howzat!]怎么样[/pop]

If you mouseover the above characters, you should get a pop-up with pinyin and English, similar to the technological marvels popularized on NewsinChinese.com.

If you don't, or it's not displaying properly, or there's some other kind of problem I never predicted, can you let me know, perhaps with a screenshot if necessary, and letting me know what browser you are using (although I'm unlikely to be able to support anything beyond Firefox and IE.

If you want to play around with this yourself, use the following format

[ pop= PINYIN / ENGLISH ] CHINESE [ / pop ]

but without and spaces inside the [ ]'s

and don't do anything time consuming, as the format may yet change and all your work will be lost. Will let you know when it's safe to use.

Roddy

[Desmond]

[pop=hen3 hao3 / awesome!]很好[/pop]

Yay it works!

I just don't know how to make the tones appear above the pinyin instead of beside it (I typed it as "hen3 hao3")

[roddy]

Try Pinyin.info's tool

[pop= hěn hǎo / very good]很好[/pop]

I'm hoping to have this automated soon, with some Adsotrans assistance of course . . .

Roddy

[liuzhou]

[pop=yǐn qǐ jìng wèi de/awesome]引起敬畏的[/pop]

It works fine in the Opera browser, too!

[roddy]

In that case I hereby officially start supporting Opera (until it breaks).

Any of the 3.4% of users who use Safari like to chime in? I suspect it won't work, if I remember what we found setting up NewsinChinese.com

[Quest]

Testing.... [pop= likes beer]roddy[/pop]

[pop=I am revealing the plot!]movie spoiler[/pop]

[pandaxiongmao]

Safari works on the first pop-up on this page, but the rest of them do not work correctly.

The first pop-up ( [pop= Zěnmeyàng / Howzat! ] 怎么样 [/pop] ) works as expected, but all the other links only show yellow highlighting. Those links show a question-mark cursor when the mouse is on top, but no pop-up appears.

Works fine in Firefox though, which I prefer to use anyway (regardless of platform).

[roddy]

We now appear to have integrated English and pinyin pop-ups for Chinese text. Let's test it on the first paragraph of an article about Britney!

[pop=regarding/duìyú]对于[/pop][pop=24 years old/èrsì suì]24岁[/pop][pop=/de]的[/pop][pop=Britney/bùlánní]布兰妮[/pop][pop=and/hé]和[/pop][pop=27 years old/èrqī suì]27岁[/pop][pop=/de]的[/pop][pop=Kevin/kǎiwén]凯文[/pop].[pop=Federline/fèidélín]费德林[/pop][pop=speaking of/éryán]而言[/pop]，[pop=matrimony/hūnyīn]婚姻[/pop][pop=just like/jiùxiàng]就像[/pop][pop=slapstick/nàojù]闹剧[/pop]，[pop=love/àiqíng]爱情[/pop][pop=easily/dòngzhé]动辄[/pop]“[pop=overcooked/làn]烂[/pop][pop=tail/wěi]尾[/pop]”，“[pop=divorcing/líhūn]离婚[/pop]”[pop=even more/gèng]更[/pop][pop=to be/shì]是[/pop][pop=3rd/sānrì]三日[/pop][pop=2/liǎng]两[/pop][pop=/tóu]头[/pop][pop=地/dì]地[/pop][pop=hangs/guà]挂[/pop][pop=at/zài]在[/pop][pop=mouth/zuǐ]嘴[/pop][pop=side/biān]边[/pop]。[pop=because of/yīnwéi]因为[/pop][pop=not has/wú]无[/pop][pop=caesura/xiūzhǐ]休止[/pop][pop=/de]的[/pop][pop=noisy/chǎonào]吵闹[/pop]，[pop=capricious/rènxìng]任性[/pop][pop=/de]的[/pop][pop=Britney/bùlánní]布兰妮[/pop][pop=at/zài]在[/pop][pop=Christmas/shèngdànjié]圣诞节[/pop][pop=before/qián]前[/pop][pop=once again/zàidù]再度[/pop][pop=to get/jiāng]将[/pop][pop=husband/zhàngfu]丈夫[/pop][pop=Kevin/kǎiwén]凯文[/pop][pop=to sweep/sǎo]扫[/pop][pop=earthrise/dìchū]地出[/pop][pop=door/mén]门[/pop]，[pop=again/yòu]又[/pop][pop=get mad/nǎo]恼[/pop][pop=again/yòu]又[/pop][pop=indignant/nù]怒[/pop][pop=/de]的[/pop][pop=Kevin/kǎiwén]凯文[/pop]“[pop=a tooth for a tooth retaliation/yǐyáhuányá]以牙还牙[/pop]”，[pop=toward/xiàng]向[/pop][pop=Germany/déguó]德国[/pop]《[pop=image/túpiàn]图片[/pop][pop=to announce/bào]报[/pop]》[pop=greatly/dà]大[/pop][pop=to fall/dǎo]倒[/pop][pop=bitterly/kǔ]苦[/pop][pop=water/shuǐ]水[/pop]：“[pop=with/hé]和[/pop][pop=Britney/bùlánní]布兰妮[/pop][pop=together/zàiyīqǐ]在一起[/pop][pop=/de]的[/pop][pop=grand/háo]豪[/pop][pop=extravagant/shē]奢[/pop][pop=life/shēnghuó]生活[/pop][pop=simply is/jiǎnzhí]简直[/pop][pop=bad/zāo]糟[/pop][pop=penetrated/tòule]透了[/pop]！”

And that appears to be working nicely. Many thanks to the team at Adsotrans.com for their very quick response - you'd never know they survive on a diet of chicken and peanuts.

To do this yourself, click the link in the Adsotate box that now appears when you make a new post (or send a private message). Paste the Chinese into the form that pops up, then hit the button. When it refreshes, copy the contents of the box (CTRL + A will save you scrolling) and paste into your post.

I'll call this beta for now - problems? suggestions? What do we think about the underlining? I want to have some way of distinguishing annotated text from normal text - otherwise people will spend all day mousing over normal Chinese text and complaining there aren't any popups.

Panda: Thanks for confirming it doesn't work on Safari. I'm not going to worry about it though, sorry Safari folk.

Roddy

[trevelyan]

Glad things are working out, Roddy.

Just a note -- if there are words Adso doesn't recognize, they can be added by clicking on the Quick Add button on http://www.adsotrans.com. I've just added [pop=Federline/fèidélín]费德林[/pop] so that language students will never again stumble translating Britney articles.

The basic idea is that the more people contribute content, the better annotation and translation features get for everyone. So if you find this useful, please consider lending a hand. Reports on problems are also welcome.

[roddy]

I've just added 费德林

And I just reannotated, so we have the most up-to-date translations

[Shadowdh]

Excellent (in the best Mr Burns voice I can muster).... works a treat and helpful for those Hanzi I dont know (of which there are soooo many)... cheers

[randall_flagg]

Hey Roddy, I've been wondering for a long time: are you the guy doing the "newsinchinese".com page? If you are: Thank's a lot! It is an awesome page.

[Quest]

[pop=24 years old/èrsì suì]24岁[/pop]

ersi sui

[roddy]

NewsinChinese: That was a cooperative effort between myself and Adsotrans - they had the translation engine / dictionary, and together we plugged it into a blog CMS using RSS feeds to update automatically. The site is now pretty much fully automatic though, and I haven't looked at it for months.

ersi sui

Corrections / improvements on Adsotated content need to go to Adsotrans so the database can be updated.

Roddy

[Quest]

The pop up window is big, but the text box is rather small. (IE)

[roddy]

It's minimalist

Does need to be made prettier though. Today's list of things to do includes making the pop-up pages fit into the look and feel of the forums better.

Roddy

[trevelyan]

Thanks Quest --> [pop=24 years old/èrshí sì suì]24岁[/pop].

Still clearing out cobwebs from the shift to adding complex support. That was one.

[stephanhodges]

I saw the explaination a while back, but now that I've used the "Adsostate Add pinyin" for the first time, I couldn't remember how to increas the size within the pop up. Could directions on how to do this be added to the pop up dialog one gets when clicking on the "add" link?

[Guest]

Hmm... I don't really think it's a bright policy to "support IE" or to "support Firefox" or any other individual browser. Especially in the case of IE, you're supporting something that has a broken, complex and not fully documented rendering engine. Sure it has a big browser share now, but think how much money short-sighted companies are having to spend now to make the "IE supported" pages they wrote 3 years ago display properly in Firefox now.

There's no way of knowing what browser people will use to visit a site. Besides Mac users, there are rapidly growing ranks of cellphone users, web tv users, etc... It's far more rationonal, and far more maintainable if you just support WWC standards. Then it should run on just about anyone's browser, and it's not your fault if it doesn't.

Oh, and I've got something to contribute, too! I saw the pinyin.info tone tool. It's okay, but it sends queries back to a server every time you add tone marks to a word. As a result, it's

1) slow

2) undownloadable

So, I wrote my own! The whole thing is in javascript. Feel free to download my pinyin tone tool, copy the code to your site, embed it, or whatever. Just attribute it to me and don't remove my comments in the code. It's at http://toshuo.com/?page_id=50

[roddy]

Split the discussion on a Cantonese Romanisation Tool - weixiaoma, you might also want to start a new thread to introduce your tone-adding tool.

As for supporting IE, it accounts for 71% of forums usage. Add in Firefox and you account for around 93%. As long as everything works for those two, and is usable for the remainder (Safari, Mozilla, Opera take it up to 99%) then I'm happy.

There are mainly cosmetic changes due to be made to the pop-up processing, holding off on it for now as I have other stuff to do. Which is why I shouldn't even be writing this post . . .