Re: Telek Webpage

On Mon, 9 Oct 2000, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:

>Marcus Smith wrote:
>>
>> Hey all,
>>
>> I decided to announce the webpage for Telek. It is in a *very* unfinished
>> state right now. There is an incomplete glossary and a small discussion of
>> some phonology including pitch-accent and the phonemes, but I haven't added
>> the material about syllable structure yet.  There is no syntax, but there
>> is some morphology, simply because it is necessary for the discussion of
>> pitch-accent.
>>
>> There is also a picture and a short blurb about me, for anyone who is
>> interested.
>>
>> URL: http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~smithma/Telek/titlepage.html
>
>Har, har.  We have little need to a flashy titlepage which leads to
>a list of dead links.
>
>It would make more sense to first build the pages, and *then* announce
>them.
By God, you must be Jesus H. Christ's twin brother: a Perfect Man. You
just love jumping on people when they don't provide you with a perfect
piece for examination.  If you'd paid attention at all, you'd note
that exactly what Marc says he's put up is actually there: a picture
of himself, a short blurb about himself, a glossary and a discussion
of phonology and accent. Which by the way are quite nice [I appreciate
in others' conlanging efforts the time taken in doing up the
phonology, with IPA and everything. I've never really done that for
any of mine, cos I hate phonology and have little patience in figuring
out what everything is supposed to sound like in different
environments.]

Also, broken links are a fact of life in website design. Sure it would
have been nice if Marc had put up a little more than he did before
announcing the site; but it's there now. C'est la vie. You can either
say something constructive about what's there or you can bitch about
what ain't. So get off your high horse before you fall. Or at least
lower your nose so you can see what's in front of you.

I agree with you 100%, though, that the opening page is not necessary,
and is a bit of a bother to have to click through. If I were him, I'd
drop it, and alter the banners to add the byline. Or turn the title
page into a general overview / introduction of the language, any
culture attached, etc.

My only other gripe is on the glossary.html page, where the first
letter is " ' "; I passed over the whole glossary first time
mistakenly thinking there wasn't anything there. Then I noticed that
the " ' " was in fact a link. It might be a nice idea on that
particular page to list the letters of Telek's alphabet as links
rather than having to click through each and every of 28 dictionary
pages to get to "yy". For example, the list could be set up like this:
' | A | AA | B | D | etc.; and it would only be a matter of clicking
on the letter you want to see. Also, if it's not too much trouble, I
like seeing an English-Conlang lexicon. This would be very handy for
anyone who passes by to find a word. Though your dictionary is small
now, it will grow.

Padraic.