Hello Itay,
I'm afraid what you want would be quite difficult to implement in Moodle, but probably possible, if it was commissionned.
I am attaching a "fake" screenshot; is that what you would like to see?
On a more general principle, I do not think it would be logical to have a glossary where the entries would consist of words in different languages (as in my attached example) and would therefore need more than a single alphabet listing to appear. I cannot imagine dictionaries (paper or online) where entries would be in mixed languages.
However, what might be quite useful is to have the possibility, in each individual glossary settings, to select - for the alphabetical listing - between the languages available on the moodle site being used. So you might have:
- an English - Russian dictionary with entries in English and the English alphabetical listing
- a Russian-English dictionary with entries in Russian and the Russian alphabetical listing
- an all-Russian glossary with entries and definitions in Russian and the Russian alphabetical listing
- etc.
Please anyone interested let's have your views.
Joseph
Hello Joseph,
YES, your "fake" screen shot is what I was talking about that is needed - One glossary with mixed alphabet's that are also reflected in the navigation bar/index.
The need for such functionality comes from existing online glossaries (in other platforms) that are used in many academic courses in our university.
On the principal level -
I believe that the need for such functionality is very important in counties with alphabet different to English. In such places students often need to know the "English" way diff rent terms are written.
Example 1: A higher education course in chemistry in which the teacher wants to teach the students scientific terms (in English) that are commonly used in academic papers. In the same glossary the teacher also wants to have the same terms in Hebrew, so students who read academic papers in Hebrew or English will know them in both ways.
Example 2: A course about famous music composers. the English way of writing the composer name is important but also the Hebrew (the local language) way is needed.
Does it help to explain the need?
Thanks,
Itay Ophir
Hello Joseph,
Your suggestion "to have the possibility, in each individual glossary settings, to select - for the alphabetical listing - between the languages available on the moodle site being used" is even more important than my initial question of multilingual index.
Correct me if I am wrong, but right now if your moodle course is in alphabet X, the glossary terms "must" be in the same alphabet to show up in the top index. I believe separating this, as you suggested is even more important.
Thanks,
Itay Ophir
Hello Nadav, Joseph and all.
I just noticed the same issue of alphabet nav menu that is course-centric vs. content-centric also appears when using the "Browse by Author" tab in the glossary module.
If the glossary term's author name is in one alphabet and the course language is in another, the nav menu will not list the authors initials.
Thanks,
Itay Ophir
This picture shows is:
especially in Moodle systems where there is a mixed use of username's Firstname and Lastanme in different languages ( like we have here in Israel, in the High Education system and collages ) users have accounts in Hebrew and in English names. and it is also difficult to find them on the system. since you are never sure what the exact name is.
not sure what should be a good solution for that. thou i had several discussions about this issue with some SysAdmins i work with.
So from the moodle system point of view, it seems there is a need to support multi-alphabet account names on the same system and reflect it in the glossary indexes?
1. Moodle site in alphabet-X with account names in Alphabet-Y (for example:site in English and accounts in Russian)
2. Moodle site in alphabet-X with account names in Alphabet-Y and account names in Alphabet-Z (for example:site in English and accounts in Russian and Hebrew)
I think that if someone opens an international moodle site, there is surly a need for such functionality, right?
Thanks,
Itay Ophir
Since that feature is not specific to the Glossary module, I suggest that you post your message again to the Languages forum. It will be interesting to see if there is an interest in multi-alphabet accounts on Moodle sites.
Thanks,
Joseph
Joseph,
To my understanding, moodle already supports the creation of multi-alphabet accounts (as seen above in my example pics).
What is not supported is in the Glossary Module - the "reflection" of the multi-alphabet in the index navigation bar.
There might be other modules (activities or resources) that also lack that "reflection", I didn't test all of them, yet
So is it still a "glossary" issue or a "language" issue?
Thanks,
Itay Ophir
Dear Mr. Rézeau,
my name is Nicola Piccolo and I'm an Italian engineer. I'm planning to work on an e-learning web site for Japanese language with a friend of mine and we chose Moodle as the platform to use for this project.
I'd like to know if there are good news about your analysis of the multi-language version of glossary index entries because we'd like to have a glossary with hiragana and katakana characters instead of the roman ones; surely we could use the romanization version of Japanese words as a work-around but it would be clearly useless because we're trying to push people to learn first the Japanese word, then its meaning in Italian language.
I guess there are some constraints and architectural issues about this topic, so I'd like to know if there is a clear roadmap for this enhancement.
Best regards,
Nicola Piccolo
Nicola,
Please do NOT apply the patch on a production server; apply on a TEST server. Please note that the patch is against moodle 1.9.8 and might not work on a different version. Finally note that you also have to add a field to your moodle database.
Carefully read the instructions in MDL-22233 and use at own risk.
Joseph
Thank you Joseph for your kindness!
Please don't worry, I'll read carefully all of your instructions about how to install the patch and I'll apply the patch to my local Moodle 2.1.1 installation (after a backup of the module glossary). I'll keep you up-to-date about my progress.
Best regards,
Nicola
Ok Joseph! I realized that it would be more convenient to continue posting on your thread:
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=148751
because of the history of the information you provided to the Moodle community.
Thank you again,
Nicola