Wednesday, July 24, 2013

#Wikidata IS a multilingual project

When information is not available in English, the genealogy took falls back to its identifier. All it takes to remedy the situation is to add value by inserting an English label.

In this instance it is all about the Ottoman dynasty and as you can see, Turkish spelling is used in English. The Turkish link for Q6355649 goes to Hümaşah Sultan. That will do as an English label as well.

The one thing I would dearly like is to be able to use the genealogy tool in multiple languages. This is how people can check if labels exist in another language.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Tuesday, July 02, 2013

Writing #Cuneiform on #Wikipedia

When you always wanted to write in the cuneiform script on Wikipedia, now you can. Technically there is not that much to it.

{{Cuneiform|{{linktext|𒄖|𒉈|𒅁|𒌨|𒅎}}}}

This is what it took to get the text you see on the infobox of the cuneiform article.
....
This is fun, nice but not all there is to it. What is really exciting is that you can now write in many, many scripts and expect that the person will see the text properly.

It is no longer necessary to create a screenshot. If anything, this is the time to find all those screenshots and replace them with the proper text and invoke the ULS and its webfonts.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#OpenDyslexic provides support on the English #Wikipedia


Today the "Universal Language Selector" premièred on the English Wikipedia. There is a ton of functionality in there and it has a lot of potential. The one thing that may prove to be a game changer for people with dyslexia is the inclusion of the OpenDyslexic font.

Once people with dyslexia start to adopt this font, chances are that they can actually read/use Wikipedia. A lot of people are dyslexic; to quote the en.wp article on the subject: "It is believed the prevalence of dyslexia is around 5-10 percent of a given population although there have been no studies to indicate an accurate percentage".

The one thing left to do; let people know that Wikipedia has improved usability for people with dyslexia. Please tell it to the teachers, the parents and most importantly to all the people you know who are dyslexic.
Thanks,
      GerardM

NB it is also available for many other languages on many other Wikis.