Michel1020 Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4976 days ago 365 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Dutch
| Message 137 of 355 17 August 2011 at 7:56pm | IP Logged |
Uservoice does not accept my entry so I put it here some ideas.
1 Translate documentation and interface.
This could be very helpfull for people who don't understand English and to promote LWT on no English websites and maybe media.
I could help with french. Your name J. Pierre sounds french but Elizabeth Montgomery husband had that same name in the famous tv serie of the 60th, and he was an American.
2 Add a prefixe to the table names in your code.
If one watchs your code now it will see the words : words, sentences, languages, texts as parts of texts, tables names and variables names (maybe this last one is linked to the tables names). If the tables names start with tab or JP or any short prefixe they will be a lot more easy to identify as tabwords, tabtexts or JPsentences, JPlanguages etc.
3 I know some people ask to make it an integrated software together with an apache-mysql-php plateform. The online versions exist for them. I would ask the opposite.
Would it be possible to divide LWT into a few modules that people could take or not. Reading - Listening - Testing - Backup - Import - Export - keyboard shortcuts etc. I think this way your code will be more easy to understand and people could make corrections or create their own idea or make their own modules. Also I think this application start to turn a little complicated and I am sure no users will use all its possibilities.
4 This one will interest the online version and the people who want to "kill" lingq. Add some kind of share vocabulary in the way of a second database where people could put their words translation and romanisation and could read those from other users.
5 Make it 3D - everything is 3D. Just joking on this one. This only make the 4 first looks more serious.
I only put this ideas because you look like you are not able to stop working on LWT - I was expecting some calm after 1.0.0.
Edited by Michel1020 on 17 August 2011 at 7:57pm
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lwtproject Pentaglot Senior Member Netherlands https://learning-wit Joined 4851 days ago 149 posts - 264 votes Speaks: French, Dutch*, German, English, Mandarin Studies: Italian
| Message 138 of 355 17 August 2011 at 8:03pm | IP Logged |
I have changed the handling of media file names. Please download new newest version (1.1.1 released 17-Aug
20:00 CEST) and check whether the problem with umlaut file names still exists. Thank you!
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lwtproject Pentaglot Senior Member Netherlands https://learning-wit Joined 4851 days ago 149 posts - 264 votes Speaks: French, Dutch*, German, English, Mandarin Studies: Italian
| Message 139 of 355 17 August 2011 at 8:25pm | IP Logged |
Michel1020 wrote:
Uservoice does not accept my entry so I put it here some ideas.
1 Translate documentation and interface.
This could be very helpfull for people who don't understand English and to promote LWT on no English websites and maybe media.
I could help with french. Your name J. Pierre sounds french but Elizabeth Montgomery husband had that same name in the famous tv serie of the 60th, and he was an American.
2 Add a prefixe to the table names in your code.
If one watchs your code now it will see the words : words, sentences, languages, texts as parts of texts, tables names and variables names (maybe this last one is linked to the
tables names). If the tables names start with tab or JP or any short prefixe they will be a lot more easy to identify as tabwords, tabtexts or JPsentences, JPlanguages etc.
3 I know some people ask to make it an integrated software together with an apache-mysql-php plateform. The online versions exist for them. I would ask the opposite.
Would it be possible to divide LWT into a few modules that people could take or not. Reading - Listening - Testing - Backup - Import - Export - keyboard shortcuts etc. I think
this way your code will be more easy to understand and people could make corrections or create their own idea or make their own modules. Also I think this application start to
turn a little complicated and I am sure no users will use all its possibilities.
4 This one will interest the online version and the people who want to "kill" lingq. Add some kind of share vocabulary in the way of a second database where people could put
their words translation and romanisation and could read those from other users.
5 Make it 3D - everything is 3D. Just joking on this one. This only make the 4 first looks more serious.
I only put this ideas because you look like you are not able to stop working on LWT - I was expecting some calm after 1.0.0. |
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Sorry - but my answer are five NOs.
Re 1)
No, I am not able to do this. I have thought about it, but it's too much work, and I am not proficient enough in other languages. It makes the whole system slow, too.
Re 2)
No, I am not able to do this. This goes in the direction of a multi user environment - see Benny's forum. Just create multiple databases if you need this. I have no interest to run
and administer a multi user platform.
Re 3)
No. Not possible.
Re 4)
No, too much work for me (who wants to administer such a db??)
I have nothing against LingQ. In fact, it's great. My intention with LWT was to offer a free solution for people who cannot afford LingQ, and to offer a faster solution with more
control over everything, especially the data.
LingQ has some features that LWT will never have (community/forum, usage of saved terms of other learners -although often wrong-, library of learning material, writing
correction, speaking with a tutor. It's a good solution for people who want it EASY and COMPLETE. LWT doesn't help you to write or to speak.
Re 5)
Again no. No 3D, no multiple color schemes, no rounded table edges.
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tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5825 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish
| Message 140 of 355 17 August 2011 at 10:36pm | IP Logged |
lwtproject wrote:
I have changed the handling of media file names. Please download new newest version (1.1.1 released 17-Aug
20:00 CEST) and check whether the problem with umlaut file names still exists. Thank you! |
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I checked with a very long filename with Spanish accented characters (those were the issues before in Windows) and it worked. I don't know if it will work with all accented characters, but it looks good. Thanks very much.
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tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5825 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish
| Message 141 of 355 17 August 2011 at 10:52pm | IP Logged |
J. Pierre, you are going to go down in the annals of language learning as one of the great innovators. LWT is quite inspired, in many ways. I think it is well on its way to becoming one of the pillars of the self-study language learning community, along with Anki, L-R, Iversen's method, and other techniques and technologies that stand out above the rest. LWT certainly has given my language learning efforts the stimulus they needed to reach for the next level. Thank you for the countless hours of work you have undoubtedly put into LWT.
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Michel1020 Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4976 days ago 365 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Dutch
| Message 142 of 355 17 August 2011 at 10:58pm | IP Logged |
Don't be sorry.
I did not expect you to say yes to all.
Point 2 the prefixe on tables names would make your code more easy to read - this would make it more open source and more easy for people to create options they want. I would try to do this myself but new versions come out so often. Any idea how many yet to come ?
For point 4 you would not have to manage the database - only create this option. Database management would be done by people who create a LWT multi users website.
This is not very important - like you say on lingq the hints of the community are often wrong and so they could be in a LWT sharing system. It is possible to share vocabulary in a LWT community through export and import.
For point 1 - people must only translate to their native language. You could make one version for each interface language available - all languages don't have to be in all packages - same for the documentation.
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lwtproject Pentaglot Senior Member Netherlands https://learning-wit Joined 4851 days ago 149 posts - 264 votes Speaks: French, Dutch*, German, English, Mandarin Studies: Italian
| Message 143 of 355 17 August 2011 at 11:19pm | IP Logged |
tommus wrote:
J. Pierre, you are going to go down in the annals of .... Thank you for the countless hours of work you have undoubtedly put
into LWT.
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Thank you, Tommus, and all the others, for the nice words.
I hope that the application will help everybody studying foreign languages.
MY PLANS
In the next time I will have to reduce my engagement in LWT.
My plans are to implement tagging of terms (version 1.2) and to correct the remaining bugs.
After that I will only correct bugs from time to time, and answering questions.
Maybe others will do further improvements or implement new ideas.
Everybody can create a fork of LWT at GitHub: https://github.com/lwt-project/lwt
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Michel1020 Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4976 days ago 365 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Dutch
| Message 144 of 355 18 August 2011 at 12:14am | IP Logged |
J. Pierre
I understand that having create this competitor to lingq you do not want to look like weakening them more.
I deeply disagree about the qualities you see in them.
1 Communities and forums around languages learning exist elsewhere - see this one here at how to learn any languages.
2 I already talk about the sharing of hints in my previous post.
3 The lingq library for me is divided in 3 parts.
The first one contains quality material that is available on other sites. I think it is very unfair from lingq to put this material on lingq site. It would be a lot more fair to link to the providers sites. Even if they get authorisation from these providers.
The second part is bad material create by lingq members or staff.
For the staff thing - I think about the who is she ? serie That is translated in all their languages and often do not sound natural for what I understand. For the bad material shared by members it is a lot worst - there are a lot of mistakes - either people create material that is not in their native language or their should start learning their native before learning foreign languages. There are often corrections in the forum but nobody learning a lingq lesson should have to read the forum to be sure he or she is not learning mistakes.
The third part is for people creating good material - since they work for free I had to put a word for them. The problem is that with bad material how do you know when you are learning a language what is a good material and what is not ?
4 You don't need a tutor to speak in your target language. Make some foreign friends. If you work in finance take a foreign dog (that is because in Wall street they say if you want a friend take a dog).
As I never pay lingq I never had any writing corrected there. I am sure there are many mistakes in corrections too. I do correct french writings from students now and then it is not an easy task. This service of corrections exist on other site for free. The best way is to correct yourselve - if you have an audio and a transcript - listen to the audio write what you hear and then correct with the transcript.
I disagree with you that LWT do not teach to speak or to write.
In my opinion the best way to learn to speak is to learn to understand by listening (well I do not listen through LWT but one principle of LWT is to listen to the texts we work on).
The best way to learn to write is to read - that is what we do in LWT - reading.
I could say a lot about the unfair business model of lingq. I only point one : they want to be paid for their job but people have to work for them for free.
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