[Wikipedia-l] WikiHiero is here !!

Wed Mar 24 04:51:15 UTC 2004

Hi all,
I developed a PHP program (named WikiHiero) to convert text wrote according
to the "Hieroglyphs coding manual" (international standard for typing
hieroglyph text on computer) syntax into HTML tables using a set of image
(no image generation like TeX).

I'd like to add this program into Wikimedia software that we can easily use
hieroglyphs in Wikipedia, WikiSource and Wikitionary. We need a new tag (for
example [[hiero:]]) then send to the WikiHiero program the text into that
tags. This program create a string with HTML tags (<table> and <img>) we can
print (echo) into the page during parsing.

[[hiero:w-i-k-i-p:d-i-a]] => echo WikiHiero("w-i-k-i-p:d-i-a");

I put a test version of WikiHiero at http://aoineko.free.fr. You can, for
example, try to type w-i-k-i-p:d-i-a, your name, or what you want ;o)
('-' is for block separation and ':' for glyph superposition).

I personally planed to use it in Wikipedia, but there are many hieroglyph
texts available we may add to WikiSource (if under a free licence).

The set of image contain about 1000 small PNG pictures for a total size of
about 1 Mb.
I didn't tune yet the program, but I think parsing time is inconsequential
for small text (I avoid all file check by creating pre-calculate tables).
I'm sure we can make many speed improvements, but I think this version is
quick enough to be added to Wikimedia. Any advices to speed process are
welcome.

I add an option to output hieroglyph as text (for text only browser) using
the glyph phonemes. Ypu can test it on http://aoineko.free.fr by choosing
the "Text only" mode. The better may be to add an option into preference
(like TeX) to choose the render method.

The program is under GFDL (I didn't released source yet because I want to
comment them first) and hieroglyphs pictures author authorized me to put
them under GFDL.

Aoineko