This posting is for the discussion of licencing terms for the tool.
Should we use use the Eclipse Public License? Should we use some form of BSD License? Is there some other licence we should consider?
Note! I am not capriciously spelling licence. Since I grew up using British English spelling, I prefer licence for the noun, but in terms where there is established usage, like Eclipse Public License I follow that spelling.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Policies
I expect that this will become a community driven project. I imagine that there will be a core team of people who generate ideas and implementations.
If you feel that you can contribute, please ask for posting privileges (by sending email to a member of the team).
Please keep posts on-topic and perhaps ask for opinions about new posts.
Please avoid in-appropriate and offensive language.
Posts and responses that criticize people rather than ideas can be deleted, as can posts that are offensive. Spam posts will be deleted.
Update: I have opened up comments to everyone for the moment.
If you feel that you can contribute, please ask for posting privileges (by sending email to a member of the team).
Please keep posts on-topic and perhaps ask for opinions about new posts.
Please avoid in-appropriate and offensive language.
Posts and responses that criticize people rather than ideas can be deleted, as can posts that are offensive. Spam posts will be deleted.
Update: I have opened up comments to everyone for the moment.
Introductions
What is the most effective way to learn a new language?
Without a doubt, there is no single most effective way to learn a new language. Each person will find some things more effective than others, but many are probably on the look-out for new tools.
I have been learning Chinese for a number of years, both at home where I have had, from time to time, a fairly intensely immersive Cantonese environment, and away from home, because I have recently restarted learning Mandarin. My Mandarin learning environment consists of formal lessons at a local community college (Foothill College) and ChinesePod. However, as a computer professional I have always thought that computers could play a bigger role in learning new languages, if only the right tools were available.
Over at ChinesePod Blogs some of us started throwing around ideas about a new tool that seems to have potential to provide a very good environment for language learning. It combines a number of modalities by combining available audio resources (MP3, Ogg Vorbis, ACC, etc files) with additional markup that would present a learner with the text of the underlying lesson on the screen (for exampe, in either Pinyin or characters for Mandarin, in either Jyutping or characters for Cantonese, and so on), and possibly highlight the words as they are spoken in the lesson.
Some of the original blog responses where these ideas were initially raised are:
This blog was created to provide a very focussed forum where the community who are interested in this concept can discuss and brainstorm areas related to this tool, like:
I hope that this becomes a blog that fleshes out this idea and leads to a useful tool for all language learners.
Without a doubt, there is no single most effective way to learn a new language. Each person will find some things more effective than others, but many are probably on the look-out for new tools.
I have been learning Chinese for a number of years, both at home where I have had, from time to time, a fairly intensely immersive Cantonese environment, and away from home, because I have recently restarted learning Mandarin. My Mandarin learning environment consists of formal lessons at a local community college (Foothill College) and ChinesePod. However, as a computer professional I have always thought that computers could play a bigger role in learning new languages, if only the right tools were available.
Over at ChinesePod Blogs some of us started throwing around ideas about a new tool that seems to have potential to provide a very good environment for language learning. It combines a number of modalities by combining available audio resources (MP3, Ogg Vorbis, ACC, etc files) with additional markup that would present a learner with the text of the underlying lesson on the screen (for exampe, in either Pinyin or characters for Mandarin, in either Jyutping or characters for Cantonese, and so on), and possibly highlight the words as they are spoken in the lesson.
Some of the original blog responses where these ideas were initially raised are:
- Comment-76416. Possibly the first posting on this idea
- Comment-76874. Fox begins to point out the problems with basing the concept on MP3 file tagging
- Comment-77170. Chris(mandarin student) points out that using XML markup separate from the underlying audio files has advantages and points to the Eclipse Rich Client Platform that is used by the Zhongwen Development Tool
This blog was created to provide a very focussed forum where the community who are interested in this concept can discuss and brainstorm areas related to this tool, like:
- Platform. The appropriate platform to base the tool on.
- Features and functionality. The sort of features it should have and the functions it should provide.
- Implementation. Implementations we might be working on and how to implement particular features.
- Licencing. What sort of licence any software developed by the group should fall under.
- Futures. Functionality it might extend to include.
I hope that this becomes a blog that fleshes out this idea and leads to a useful tool for all language learners.
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