Good conlang webpages

[Danny Wier]

I lost the original post I was responding to (what happened is it
somehow send to taliesin personally and not to the list, but I had
already deleted the e-mail I got and sent since I do that to save
precious hard drive space.)

It was concerning the Klingon pages. I noticed a few things I liked and
wanted to recommend:

1) It was broken up into several pages, not all on one page. Though
it's very common to have all the information of a conlang on one page;
it's not a very good habit, especially considering not everybody has a
fast connection. It's better organization anyway.

2) There were pictures of the pIqaD (the alphabet), but that's the only
graphics to be found there. Fancy pics of things not relevant to the
language only slow down the computer. Also, make sure that GIFFs and
JPEGs are 1-bit in format (monochrome, or black and white with no gray),
unless color is necessary. If "smoothed" fonts are to be used (as in
Windows 95 smoothed screen fonts), use a JPEG file set to 8-bit gray
scale (256 shades), not 24-bit true color.

3) The overall design was simple and concise, but effective. No frames
were used. (frames are okay as long as they're not abused, but for
some, they're annoying in themselves)

4) The phonology included graphics of IPA representation (for accurate
technical data), but also "laymen's terms" for pronunciation of more
exotic consonants like D, q, Q, S, tlh, and ', also ng at the beginning
of a word or syllable. (However, on my Tech page, I have a lot of
sounds to talk about, so I have to be as brief as reasonably possible.
I did a little trick: to represent IPA symbols like gamma and theta, I
use the common Symbol font, which has unaccented Greek letters and other
mathematical and dingbat symbols; the only problem is I don't think all
browsers can work with dynamic fonts. Of course I'll have to put in a
lot of footnotes explaining some of my more unorthodox conventions, like
using /m'/ to represent an voiced implosive bilabial nasal or /s./ a
voiceless retroflex sibilant fricative...)

The Klingon page was done very well, though it was simple and plain in a
way. I prefer simplicity in web documents anyway, mostly because I
don't feel like fooling with real elaborate graphics, frames, background
music, all that. I don't know how to put all that in my webpages
anyway.

Danny

(New and improved Tech pages: http://www.inu.net/dawier/Tech.html)

[Josh Roth]

In a message dated 1/24/98 10:26:27 PM, you wrote:

>I lost the original post I was responding to (what happened is it
>somehow send to taliesin personally and not to the list, but I had
>already deleted the e-mail I got and sent since I do that to save
>precious hard drive space.)
>
>It was concerning the Klingon pages. I noticed a few things I liked and
>wanted to recommend:
>
>1) It was broken up into several pages, not all on one page. Though
>it's very common to have all the information of a conlang on one page;
>it's not a very good habit, especially considering not everybody has a
>fast connection. It's better organization anyway.

I think it's ok to have everything on one page if you don't have too much, but
most people do have a lot and really should split it up.

>2) There were pictures of the pIqaD (the alphabet), but that's the only
>graphics to be found there. Fancy pics of things not relevant to the
>language only slow down the computer.

You also get to *see* the pictures once they're downloaded! And I think
little pictures on the side (e.g. NEW!) and background patterns are ok. But I
do agree with you pretty much. I hate it when there are way to many pictures,
as there often are.

>Also, make sure that GIFFs and
>JPEGs are 1-bit in format (monochrome, or black and white with no gray),
>unless color is necessary. If "smoothed" fonts are to be used (as in
>Windows 95 smoothed screen fonts), use a JPEG file set to 8-bit gray
>scale (256 shades), not 24-bit true color.
>
>3) The overall design was simple and concise, but effective. No frames
>were used. (frames are okay as long as they're not abused, but for
>some, they're annoying in themselves)
>
>4) The phonology included graphics of IPA representation (for accurate
>technical data), but also "laymen's terms" for pronunciation of more
>exotic consonants like D, q, Q, S, tlh, and ', also ng at the beginning
>of a word or syllable.

Yes!! That was the first thing that hit me when I went there. IPA symbol,
phonetic description, and layman's terms should always be given, for every
language, whether on the WWW, in a book, or whatever. Too often only bad,
non-specific layman's terms are given, sometimes even with the label, "this is
the best description we can give without resorting to complex phonetic terms",
and I wish the "complex phonetic terms" were there, because they'd be a lot
easier to make sense of. And sometimes (though this happens less and less as
I constantly try to further my phonetic term/IPA understanding) only complex
phonetic terms are given, and I want there to be a simple non-phonetic
explanation.

> (However, on my Tech page, I have a lot of
>sounds to talk about,

You certainly do!

> so I have to be as brief as reasonably possible.
>I did a little trick: to represent IPA symbols like gamma and theta, I
>use the common Symbol font, which has unaccented Greek letters and other
>mathematical and dingbat symbols; the only problem is I don't think all
>browsers can work with dynamic fonts. Of course I'll have to put in a
>lot of footnotes explaining some of my more unorthodox conventions, like
>using /m'/ to represent an voiced implosive bilabial nasal or /s./ a
>voiceless retroflex sibilant fricative...)
>
>The Klingon page was done very well, though it was simple and plain in a
>way. I prefer simplicity in web documents anyway, mostly because I
>don't feel like fooling with real elaborate graphics, frames, background
>music, all that. I don't know how to put all that in my webpages
>anyway.

Use a WYSIWYG program!! They make it so easy! I finally got AOLPress to
(sort of) work, so I should be putting up some pages soon myself. Of course,
if you have enough money, go out and buy Adobe Pagemill (no this is not
advertisement SPAM!!!).

>Danny
>
>(New and improved Tech pages: http://www.inu.net/dawier/Tech.html)

I'll go recheck there sometime soon too.

And, slightly off-topic, about the actual Klingon *language*. I bought the
dictionary because I thought it might be fun to see what another invented
language looked like (this was before I did all this lang stuff on the
internet), and I was kind of dissapointed. The only "alien" thing about it
was the vocabulary, which is supposedly completely unbased on any natural
lang. But every sound in it occurs in natlangs; I could speak it almost
perfectly in a few minutes (It took me a little while to figure out exactly
what the "tlh" was). The grammar is very agglutinative, but other than that,
nothing remarkable. No creative verb tenses, pronouns, cases, or anything
like that. And also bothering me is the use of a capital i when the lower
case one is completely free and available.

JTR