Dia daoibh!

I'm new here, and this is a very cool forum.

In using it, though, I've discovered a few things that I'd like to change (for me, not everyone). But I can't figure out how to do it. Is it possible?

1. This "Post" box that I'm typing in is tiny--6 lines. Is there any way to expand it?

2. Using full justification for the posts means words are spread out very wide on each line. This is very distracting for someone trying to learn a new language. Is there any way to use simple left justification for the text?

3. The font used has teeny tiny fadas. Again, this makes it difficult for a student to be sure how words are spelled. Is there any way I can use a font (typeface and size) of my own choosing?

These would seem to be very simple things to customize.

Go raibh maith agat!

Dearg,

all of what you propose would not take much to implement and, in the case of the larger typeface, has been requested before.

Before committing to these changes, I'd be interested in hearing from others on the board.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Caoimhín

A chairde,

I also have some comments but I'll first respond to Dearg's. The first suggestion might be a good idea. I haven't had any problems with the size of the box but I guess it might be more convenient with a larger one. As for the second suggestion, I'm not that convinced. In my opinion it would look less appealing. Of course, substance has to come before appearance but I must say I don't understand how that would make it easier for beginners. As for the fádas here, I would suggest we don't change them. They are in line with the size of accents in every other language. On the other hand, of course it would be great if we could use different fonts - including the IPA for Times New Roman.

My own wish would be:
PLEASE make it possible to write tables. It would be most helpful for beginners I think. If I want to post a description of different forms and pronunciations in Corca Dhuibhne and Conamara (to take a random example) it looks like this:

Corcha Dhuibhne - Pronunciation - Conamara - Pronunciation - Meaning
táim - [ta:m´] - tá mé - [ta: m´e:] - I am
bhíos - [v´i:s] - bhí mé - [v´i: m´e:] - I was
cheannaíos - [x´a'ni:s] - cheannaigh mé - [x´an@ m´e:] - I bought

It looks disastrous, but would be perfect in a table with straight lines. If I had a euro for every time I decided not to post a description because I knew it would turn out as almost impossible to read, I'd be a rich man today :-)

One interesting thing - found on many boards similar to this one - would be to offer every registered user the possibility to post a poll.

(Message edited by jonas on October 14, 2004)

Hej Jonas

You can write tables if you use some simple HTML

First cell	Second Cell
Third cell	Fourth Cell

You need to start the table with <table>
Then each row starts and ends with <tr> </tr>
Each cell is bounded by <td> </td>
Finally, finish the table with
</table>

However, I can't set the border or cellspacing options: The script is probably filtering them out.

Corca Dhuibhne	Pronunciation	Conamara	Pronunciation	Meaning
táim	[ta:m´]	tá mé	[ta: m´e:]	I am
bhíos	[v´i:s]	bhí mé	[v´i: m´e:]	I was
cheannaíos	[x´a'ni:s]	cheannaigh mé	[x´an@ m´e:]	I bought

Tá sé sin go h-iontach! Go raibh míle maith agat, a chara!

Fáilte is fiche romhat.

Hi, guys!

I have a small complaint, too. Everytime after I quote something (with \quote) the subsequent text which follows the quote goes with super-small font. Is it that only me is having this problem?

No. I posted about this before. Caoimhín tried to fix the script, but...

Rómán,

One way to fix this problem is to follow the quote with a 'font size=+1' tag.

Must try that

---

quote:

a quote

---

small post quote text

Does the tag restore the size?
Bingo, it does! Caoimhín, how about adding the tag to the script? (<font size=+1>)

This is all very fascinating. I didn't know about some of those things but I have a question now for the html inclined. How do you change the font or is that one of the problems we're discussing because I tried and I didn't succeed? As for the little post box thingy...it is very small...but I don't really care either way. We've been doing it this way for a long time but I guess it might make it easier. About the words being spaced out across the line...I have no idea what that's about? What do you mean? Am I seeing it, just not understanding that its happening (probably)? And lastly, I like the little fadas. I think big fadas would look weird and be even more distracting.

As one even less html inclined (believe, I know nothing about it), how do you do your signature, Natalie?

I'll up the font size on quoted text this weekend and fix the blockquote problem too Aonghus.

Thanks for reminding me.

Caoimhín

Let me clear up a few things about my original post.

1. I wasn't trying to force changes on anyone. My ideal wish was for user-customizable settings, so Jonas could have it his way on his browser and I could have it my way on my browser, for example. If that's not possible, I guess we need more discussion.

2. I'm not trying to make the fadas bigger--that would look weird! I was just asking for a different typeface where the fadas are stronger (thicker, not larger; maybe I misspoke). All that needs to be done is for the main text of the messages to use the default browser font. I mean, that's why it's the default--so users can set it to be whatever they want. (In fact, most browsers default to Times New Roman for the default font anyway, so it's curious that this board's software forces the body text of messages to Times New Roman.) I don't care about the fonts for the headers, footers, usernames, instructions, etc. Just the main body text.

3. In terms of lining up text on each line, and the spaces between each word, this board uses what's called "full justification": every line in a paragraph--except the last line--is exactly the same length. This is done by inserting extra spaces between words (and sometimes individual letters) so that each line is the same length. Sometimes it's not that noticeable, and sometimes it's very distracting. How things get spread out depends on your browser, your screen resolution, and your operating system. Full Justification was "the big thing" when computers first came around because it showed how powerful they were (it's a pain in the neck to try to do it by hand). But over the years, experts have come around to thinking Left Justified (or "ragged right" because of the asymmetry of the right side of each paragraph) is easier to read.

For example, compare this box that you post messages into with the preview or final message. In the box your text appears ragged right; on the preview and final message, it's fully justified.

The message boards at many companies (apple.com, adobe.com, macromedia.com--all heavyweights in design and typography) use ragged right text in their forums. In fact, they all also use a sans-serif font (in which fadas would appear darker), too.

The font doesn't need to be bigger, just better optimized for online viewing.

Those criticisms aside, let me point out that these forums are beautifully designed. The colors are harmonious, the icons are pleasant to look at, there's plenty of whitespace. It's really a gorgeous site! Don't want to seem ungrateful.

(Oh, and the people are great, too!)

Thanks for listening.

I've left-aligned the text for now.

Frankly, I like the look of justified text, but if left-aligned is easier to read....

I'm going to experiment with font combinations on our test board over the next week or so and I'll see if I can come up with a more pleasing combination of size and font face.

And Aonghus, damned if I know what is causing the point reduction following quoted text. For some reason the insertion of quoted text is preventing the main paragraph tag (which sets the size of the font in posts) from closing.

Last, Dearg, your comments were taken in the spirit they were intended. Go raibh maith agatsa.

Caoimhín

A bheul!

I was suggesting that you add the fix suggested by Lúcas to the script: an additional <font size=+1> tag after the end of a quote block.

A hAonghuis,

sorry I didn't make that clearer.

Adding a font increase from the text box here is easy enough, because you can isolate the text in question i.e. that which follows quoted text.

Adding that tag to the script isn't so easy, because the script sees the entire post as a single text block. Adding a +1 font tag (that would work) would increase the font size of the entire post, not just the text following a quote.

Hope that makes more sense.

Caoimhín

I was suggesting modifying section of the script which translates the \ quote { } to html.

It adds the HTML tags <blockquote> and </blockquote> to the HTML. As far as I can see (from the source), the problem arises beacuse that breaks up the <font> , </font> pairs, and could be fixed by having it stick a <font> tag AFTER the </blockquote> tag.

I realise the script is probably big and confusing - the HTML it produces seems to be unnecessarily cluttered. But I think you ought to be able to find where it converts quotes, and stick in a local fix.

BTW, the vocative of Aonghus is simply a Aonghuis - no eclipsing H!

(Message edited by aonghus on October 15, 2004)

Jonas, I'm sorry I wasn't quicker replying to you. I must write my messages at the wrong time of the day (or maybe its because of the time change) because whenever I come back to check the site, everyone has already wrote like 50 posts!

Now in my signature thing in my profile I have:

\font {Book Antiqua" SIZE="4" COLOR= "#339900,Natalie}

Natalie

(no space between font and curly bracket though or the equal signs and quotations after color)

This makes it green, big, another font and my name. What really confuses me right now is because that's not what I put in to begin with but the numbers tells the colors, the Book Antiqua is the font and the word Natalie is obviously, my signature!

I spent the last 15 min trying to post on here what I really put into my signature box but unfortunately, it would not stop with the HTML. I did learn something valuable though...the computer will still write HTML even if you just write stuff out like the word "quotations" instead of using quotations. Computers really are much smarter than I thought they were...

That probably wasn't very much help. I'm not good at computer stuff. Really the html that I just told you, was all copied and pasted from a list of it I have except that I filled in the blanks. Perhaps if you ask a particular question about all this stuff, I can give you a more accurate answer, or even better, someone more computer-savvy can explain it to you.

By the way, to change the color, you need a color cube:

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/3505/help/colorcube.html

I just learned something else right now. Apparently we can change the font and size and color and so on and so forth...because I just did (without realizing) in my example.

This is a new breakthrough for me! Thank you Jonas! If you had not have asked about my signature, I would never have figured all this out!

\font {Book Antiqua" SIZE="4" COLOR= "#339900,Natalie}

So anyway, that's all I used except for the space between ...COLOR= "#33... and ...\font {Book An...

My feeling exactly! But Caoimhín inherited the perl script from somebody, so cleaning it up will be a mammoth task which I suspect he hasn't the time for it.

quote:

BTW, I feel sorry for whoever (Caoimhín?) has to maintain these pages. It is a messy combination of CSS stylesheets with embedded HTML formatting--a dangerous combination if ever there was one!

(Message edited by Aonghus on October 16, 2004)

And of course, while we're at it, is it possible to do something about the clock. Even though it will say that I'm posting this at 4:42am , I am in fact posting it 11:42am, it's a foggy day in Finland, not a late night/early morning somewhere else (of course, I'm not suggesting that we make Helsinki-time the official one either)

Thanks for your help.

It's not the missing font tag that is causing problems, it's a css issue. Insertion of additional formatting tags within the main paragraph tags broke the link to the stylesheet.

I switched the paragraph tag for a div tag and everything works again.

quote:

this is a test of the quote tag

And Jonas, we gave some thought to switching to GMT, but decided to stick with EST because that's where we are located.

Caoimhín

(Message edited by caoimhín on October 17, 2004)

(Message edited by caoimhín on October 17, 2004)

Hi Caoimhín,
obair mhaith. How about adding EST on to the time string?

> I switched the paragraph tag for a div tag and everything works again.

That might cover up the problem, but it's just sweeping the dirt under the rug. :-)

What browser did you use to test the closing font tag that I described?

Dearg, I use Safari as my default Web browser.

As for the time issue Aonghus, we change from EST to EDT once a year. Would (EST/EDT) be clear enough?

Caoimhín

Is cuma liomsa. Tá fhios agamsa cén t-am a bhíonn i gceist. ANE seans? (Am Nua Eabhrac)

I don't have a problem with the time, so perhaps we should ask others what they think.

Dhá cheann a roghnach eatarthu:

1) An t-am in Éirinn
2) Am Áit Cheannceathruithe Dhaltaí na Gaeilge

B'fhearr liomsa an chéad cheann ;-D mar atáim in Éirinn.