http://www.wesay.org/blogs Thu, 21 Jan 2010 07:18:49 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en If you aren’t yet using the new collaboration features of WeSay, you may have multiple versions of your dictionary out there.  Here are a few notes on ways to get them together. The simplest case is where the users have been working on completely different sets of words, with ... http://www.wesay.org/blogs/2010/01/21/merging-lift-dictionary-files/ WeSay has always had Tasks which would show you just the words that needed some more information in a particular field.  However, the selection of which entries to show was pretty blunt:  if the field had an empty slot in any of its multiple writing systems, the task would show ... http://www.wesay.org/blogs/2009/06/22/more-control-over-missing-info-tasks/ Illustrations always cheer up an otherwise drab dictionary.  Until now, you had to put in a lot of work to find or create illustrations, get the rights to them,  and hook them into your dictionary.  With the latest release of our 0.5 line (build 1917), adding illustrations is a lot ... http://www.wesay.org/blogs/2009/04/08/art-of-reading-comes-to-wesay/ For a long time, I've had the crazy idea that audio should be just another kind of "writing system".  I'm happy to say that now, crazy or not, you can set up a project to like this:   Notice the circles there?  They're trying to be unobtrusive.   When you move ... http://www.wesay.org/blogs/2009/01/07/collecting-audio-with-wesay/ In my last post, I mentioned that three levels of printing WeSay dictionaries are taking shape: Useful for everyday WeSay users, with no training. Good enough for final publication of many projects, with a little training or computer savvy. Powerful enough for any project, perhaps needing a specialist. In that post, we covered #2, ... http://www.wesay.org/blogs/2009/01/07/single-click-printing/ WeSay really wants to focus on gathering data.  It really doesn't want to become a full-powered dictionary layout system.   Ideally, there would be an invisible, friction-free means of getting a simple dictionary printout at the click of a button, and customized one with a couple clicks.  And perhaps a 3rd, ... http://www.wesay.org/blogs/2009/01/06/open-in-lexique-pro/ Our approach to software development requires that we "ship early, ship often".  We listen carefully to you, and try to quickly respond to your requests (though at this point, we're way behind on many requests for new capabilities). The down-side of this approach was that the newest version is not ... http://www.wesay.org/blogs/2009/01/06/which-wesay/ It's been a wild year for our team, and if all you do is follow this blog, you'd think we disappeared.  Eric has moved to Microsoft (lucky them!), I've moved from Thailand to the USA and then Papua New Guinea, and two new guys have joined our team in Thailand.  ... http://www.wesay.org/blogs/2009/01/05/new-dashboard/ The Eee is, so far, the best selling of the new wave of "4P" computers; laptops which are characterized by low Price, adequate Performance, portability, and low electrical Power requirements.  Now, this is no OLPC; it costs around $500 and isn't as rugged. It does not aim at the same ... http://www.wesay.org/blogs/2008/08/26/wesay-on-the-eee-900/ Recently, we were asked to make a way for a user of a translation program to make use of WeSay, without leaving the program they've been trained on. The native speaker-user will want to: See which words are missing from the dictionary, and add them along with a definition. Jump into ... http://www.wesay.org/blogs/2008/01/16/using-wesay-from-other-applications/