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User:Vuara/A word is a word is a word

http://www.accessiblesociety.org/mediamatters/mm20.html

Wed, 11 Dec. 2002 -- Media Matters No. 20: A word is a word is a word -- or is it?

Today's Media Matters begins a look at the words we use to talk about our research when we work to disseminate it beyond our own research colleagues.

Scientists, researchers and professionals all have sets of words they use routinely. The words seem clear enough, we think. Some terms are specific to one's particular profession. Others are terms that are common to the scientific community. Scientists and researchers use words in very precise ways, to mean one thing only -- and not another.

The problem with these words is that, while they communicate specific concepts clearly to colleagues, they often are thought of as jargon by outsiders.

When our goal is to reach the public with information about our research findings, the use of such words often erects an unnecessary barrier.

Journalism professor Carl Sessions Stepp of the University of Maryland gives a simple explanation by talking about what he calls "banana words."

Think of words such as "prison," "sidewalk," or "shark," he says. These are sometimes called "banana words" because, like the word "banana," they conjure up specific, shared images for most of us.

By contrast, consider words such as "proposal," "facility" and "problem." These are sometimes called "fuzz words," "blob words," or "second-degree words," he says, because they convey only abstractions. Although certain scientific terms are meaningful and clear to researchers, they fall into this category when they are used in press releases meant for editors and reporters in general-interest media.

Readers can understand banana words standing alone, but fuzz words require other words before making sense.

Although to a researcher a "banana word" may seem to denote fuzzy thinking, in fact it communicates more clearly to people who need only a general understanding of your research, whereas a word that may seem to you more specific in fact seems to be only a "blob word" to reporters and editors.

Especially in the first few sentences of a press release, says Stepp, one should strive for the highest possible percentage of banana words and images.

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http://www.uga.edu/langlab/vp0101featurewiwiwuial.htm

The University of Georgia Language Laboratories' VOICEPRINT ONLINE

A Word is a Word is a Word unless It's from Another Language

What do the following have in common?

The skunk someone hit on the GA 316... The video you wanted to rent... The Grand Canyon you visited last summer... The junk you keep putting in your closet... The soybeans doctors say are good for you... The alarm clock that didn't go off this morning... The English paper you haven't written... The tomato, potato and apricot, some of us eat regularly... The salt and pepper that add spice to many dishes... The gadgets you can't live without... The pumpkin pie of the traditional Thanksgiving feast...

Are you stumped? Here's a clue: look at the list again, but this time, look only and very carefully at the first noun(s).

The skunk someone hit on the GA 316... The video you wanted to rent... The Grand Canyon you visited last summer... The junk you keep putting in your closet... The soybeans doctors say are good for you... The alarm clock that didn't go off this morning The English paper you haven't written... The tomato, potato,and apricot some of us eat regularly... The salt and pepper that add spice to many dishes... The gadgets you can't live without... The pumpkin pie of the traditional Thanksgiving feast... Fourteen words...all perfectly understandable to speakers of American English, and yet, they have something very un-American in common. If you guessed that these words derive from other languages, you're right. These fourteen words come from over a dozen foreign languages; they, and thousands of other words, have been seamlessly incorporated into American English.

But, American English doesn't just "take " from other languages; it also "gives" many words and expressions to other languages. The difference between a "living" and a "dead" language is like the difference between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee: everything flows into the Dead Sea; nothing flows out.

skunk..."he who squirts" If you've hit one on the road or met one face to face, nobody needs to tell you this little, striped mammal can squirt his foul, yellow spray up to a dozen feet. Perhaps, the Algonquian Indians, finding themselves once too often at the other end of the yellow spray, invented the word from which the word "skunk" is derived; in the Algonquian dialect, it simply means "he who squirts."

video..."I see" Video, from the Latin "I see," has been applied to television since the 1950's.

Canyon..."a large tube or funnel" If you've been to the Grand Canyon--perhaps, the most famous canyon in the world--canyon as a large tube or funnel hardly seems adequate to contain the meaning of what you experience standing on its North Rim and looking across the magnificent expanse before you. Derived from the Spanish, canyon in the U.S. is used to mean a very deep valley or gorge with steep sides, often with water flowing at the bottom. Even this definition falls short. Standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon, you know--among other things--what it means to run out of words before you run out of thoughts.

Junk..."untidy, small sailing boat" In the 18th century, pronunciation of foreign words was as much of a problem as it is today. Then, British sailors pronounced the Portuguese-via-Japanese word for small, sailing vessel, djong, as junk. Because the "junks" looked messy and untidy, "junk"--it is conjectured--has come to mean messy stuff.

Soybean...."salted food + oil" The ancient Chinese originally made a sauce from this bean, and it is believed, named the bean after the sauce. It is conjectured--things and words in the ancient world tended to travel without leaving a paper trail--that when the bean, perhaps in sauce or without, arrived in Japan, they called it shoy. From the Japanese word came the English soy, to which was added bean, and hence soybean. It is said that the Japanese valued soy sauce so highly, it was used as part of the salary of imperial court officers in fifth century Japan.

alarm..."a warning" There have probably always been various words used as containers for transmitting the meaning of danger or warning or enemy coming. It is curious why a certain word from a specific language becomes the word from which American English derives a word to contain, in this case, the meaning of warning. In the case of alarm, it is the Italian word all' arme! from which we derive alarm. In many instances, when words are derived from "foreign" words, letters drop and vanish, perhaps, in the interests of simplification.

English...10 million words As a designation for a language, English is first recorded in about A.D. 1000. At that time, there were about 30,000 words in the English language. Today's dictionaries contain about 650,000 words, but if all scientific and technical terms were included, the number of words in the English language swells to more than 10 million words. The average English speaker has a vocabulary of about 3,000 words, whereas an educated or well-read person might have a vocabulary of 60,000 words. Shakespeare used over 20,000 different words to write his plays. Linguistically speaking, where are you on the 3,000 - 60,000+ English vocabulary scale?

tomato..."love apple" Your friends, the ones who pronounce it "toe-mah-toe", are historically correct. The tomato plant came from the New World-- Mayans were first to cultivate it--to Spain and was called tomate. Americans didn't eat tomatoes until about 1830. Why? They thought they were poisonous. It's partially true. The vine of the plant is poisonous. As for their designation as "love apples"...there is much conjecture and numerous tales as to how this came about. The most reasonable tale tells how courtly Sir Walter Raleigh presented a tomato to Queen Elizabeth and with courtly suggestiveness advised her it was "an apple of love." Given the various tales, it is not surprising that tomatoes soon became a "wicked aphrodisiac." To this day, the tomato's common name in German is still Liebesapfel, and the expression hot tomato for a seductive and sexy woman is common to many languages.

potato... a tuber by the wrong name Although it is one of the world's most important vegetables, it has been incorrectly named. Potato derives from the Haitian word batata, for "sweet potato," which the Spaniards found in the West Indies in 1526 and introduced to Europe. Batata was corrupted to patata in Spanish and further corrupted by the English to potato. Then, the Spaniards discovered the Peruvian white potato, an unrelated plant, and ignoring the native name for it--papas--gave it the same name as the earlier tuber, and it, too, became known as potato in England. The English made a distinction between the two unrelated vegetables, and the one came to be called the sweet potato and the other white potato. And where, oh where, does spud come from? You guessed it--from the spade-like tool used to dig potatoes.

apricot..."early ripe" The Romans gave this relatively early ripening but small fruit a big name, calling it praecoquum. By the time the word entered Arabic, it lost a couple of letters and became alburquq; by the time Portuguese was through with it, it had regained a couple of letters and became albricoque. In England, it morphed into apricock. It wasn't until the 18th century that the Roman praecoquum became what we now call it, namely apricot.

salt... highly valued seasoning In ancient times, salt was highly valued, so much so that spilling it was an unlucky omen for the Romans. Roman soldiers were paid in salt (sal), so valuable a seasoning and preservative it was thought to be. pepper..."dried berries of climbing shrub" The word for this spicy condiment can be traced all the way back to the Sanskrit pippali. Garden peppers are not related to this shrub but were named the same when Columbus discovered hot varieties of garden peppers in the West Indies. He mistakenly believed they were simply a new variety of the old climbing shrub peppers.

gadget..."little mechanical thing" A relatively new word as words go, gadget dates back to only 1886 and likely derives from the French gachette.

pumpkin..."a fruit cooked by the sun" This member of the squash family originated in the Americas. Originally, the word for pumpkin probably came from the Greek pepon, a kind of melon. Pumpkins were so plentiful and everywhere among the Pilgrims that someone wrote: "we have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon, if it were not for pumpkins we would soon be undoon."

VoicePrint recommends Robert Hendrickson's QPB Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origin (the source for the information on word origins in this feature) to you if you enjoy fun with words. Words, after all, are the "currency of thought," and as such are a medium of exchange for something everyone wants: meaning.

Hendrickson's revised and expanded edition covers 15,000 word and phrase origins. "I have tried," says Hendrickson, "to make all the selections as accurate and entertaining as possible and tried to use words illustrating all the many ways words and phrases are born (words deriving from numerous languages and dialects that have enriched English...."

QPB Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins was especially created in 1998 for Quality Paperback Book Club by arrangement with Facts on File Inc. For information contact: http://www.qpb.com or http://www.factsonfile.com

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Douglas R. Howland. Translating the West: Language and Political Reason in Nineteenth-Century Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002. Xiv + 292 pp. Notes, glossary, illustrations, bibliography, index. $56.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-8248-2462-8. Reviewed by Kirsten Refsing, Department of Japanese Studies, The University of Hong Kong. Published by H-US-Japan (August, 2002)

Are we certain that we know what our words mean? The title of this review is drawn from the conclusion (p.184) to Howland's book about how western political concepts were introduced into the Japanese language during the Meiji period, and it neatly encapsulates the central focus of his work. Howland claims that many historians writing about political ideas in Japan have assumed that "a word is a word is a word", and if the Japanese used e.g. the word jiyuu at a particular moment in time, they meant "liberty"--no more, no less. His books show abundantly that such an assumption is a gross simplification.

Translating the West starts out with a long introduction setting out the parameters for the study. Howland outlines his project, which is to analyze the intellectual dynamics in the debate among Japanese scholars and intellectuals who conceptualized the process of modernization and civilization. The new vocabulary needed in this process in the early years after the Meiji Restoration came mainly from English, and its introduction into a Japanese context was not a one-time event, but rather the result of trial and error and several contesting viewpoints. To analyze how this process played out, Howland employs terminology and concepts from semiotics (transcoding material from one linguistic context to another), pragmatics (meaning is constituted through usage), Begriffsgeschichte (concept history), and, of course, from history, which is his main scholarly background. The introduction gives a brief overview of the introduction of Western learning, presents the Meirokusha intellectual elite, and describes how historians have traditionally treated the bunmeikaika ("civilization and enlightenment") process. He also discusses the problem of semantic transparency of foreign concepts, and finally the connections between concept, word, and meaning.

Chapter 2 is devoted to "civilization and enlightenment," and the debates on of how this should be brought about--from above or from below. Japanese intellectuals were well aware that the written language posed a formidable barrier to universal education and popular enlightenment by its archaic forms and complicated characters. Several solutions were proposed, of which the most successful was the movement to shift to writing colloquial rather than classical Japanese. Learning Chinese came under attack as backwards and outdated, but was defended by scholars of Chinese and eventually remained alive and well. Howland points to the important role played by the Chinese characters in mediating between Japan and the West in terms of translation. Rather than borrowing foreign words and incorporating them as loanwords, in most cases the Japanese preferred to avail themselves of the infinite possibilities for semantic extensions or neologisms present in the Chinese characters. Apart from this practical consideration, learning Chinese helped fill the moral and ethical vacuum perceived as resulting from the excessive new materialism.

Chapter 3 concentrates on translation techniques and how the transcoding of Western terms transformed the Japanese language (like Chinese had done from the fifth century onwards). The majority of the new words were coined with the help of Chinese characters. Often different choices were made by different translators or even by the same translator over time. Only later were katakana brought in to help, and the first attempts at formal standardization of common terms began in the 1880s. Actual standardization took place through the repeated usage of specific terms, which gradually brought some consensus, and a more widespread understanding of their meanings. Of course, the fact that the meanings of many terms were contested in their language of origin did not make the task easier. Howland operates with two analytical constructs, authenticity and accessibility, with regard to the translators' task: the former gives priority to the original text and attempts a close and exact translation as far as possible, while the latter prioritizes the Japanese target audience and changes the original text as necessary to ensure understanding. Several developments further helped to provide accessibility of the translated texts, such as the introduction of punctuation and development of printing techniques that made it possible to mark loanwords in the text for easy recognition.

With these preliminaries behind him, Howland proceeds to analyze in detail the history of the concept and translation of three key terms between the 1860s and the 1890s, namely "liberty", "rights" (ken as used to represent rights, privilege, power, authority, and sovereignty), and "society". He traces their interpretations in the West, as well as the many different uses they were put to by different people and in different contexts. The three chapters devoted to these terms are impressive in terms of the meticulousness with which each term is traced in the writings of the time, and in terms of providing the historical context necessary to understand the different usages. In the conclusion, Howland refers to the difficulty inherent in grasping particular meanings of terms at a particular time in the face of the general fluidity of language, and he briefly discusses another key term of the period, namely "nation".

One third of Howland's book (100 pages) is taken up by endnotes, glossary, bibliography and index, of which the endnotes constitute more than half. This is a testimony to the enormous amount of research behind the study and the diverse interdisciplinary background of the author. To linguists and anthropologists the interconnectedness of language and culture is hardly a new discovery, and they are generally well aware of the "double bind" inherent in translation: every culture has concepts, which do not have easily available equivalents in another language. If you translate them anyway, you are stuck with a less than optimal equivalent. If, as many prefer to do, you leave them in the original language and attach a longish explanation the first time it occurs, you may be criticized for needless mystification of a foreign concept. Howland may at times seem overly impressed with his own discovery of the cultural boundness of abstract concepts, but this in no way detracts from the significance and usefulness of his work.

To this reviewer who has a background in Japanese Studies and an interest in translation, the main contributions of Translating the West lie in two attributes: Firstly, it is written from a historian's point of view with the fruitful addition of a good grounding in semiotics and the history of ideas, and, secondly, in its thorough empirical specificity, namely the translation problems encountered by the Japanese intellectual elite, who translated and introduced Western liberal concepts to Japan between 1860 and 1890.

However, while reading, however I found myself wondering how other target groups might perceive this book. The cover text claims that the book will interest scholars of East Asian Studies, translation studies, and historians of political thought. Knowledge of the Japanese language is therefore not a prerequisite for readers. Indeed, non-Japanese speakers can enjoy a detailed explanation of what a syllabic alphabet is (p. 47). It seems, nevertheless, difficult to imagine what scholars, who do not know Japanese, can gain from this book if they are not already familiar with Japan at least to the extent of knowing what syllabic writing is.

For those who know Japanese well, there is a curious contradiction inherent in the fact that by choosing to write the book such that it is readable to people with no knowledge of Japanese, Howland gets into the same quandary as the Japanese intellectuals of whom he writes. Namely, he has to represent Japanese translation words for English concepts, in English. This kind of "back-translation" is quite frustrating for the reader who knows Japanese and would dearly like to know what the Japanese word in question was. Thus, when Howland quotes Nishi Amane's ponderings over the difficulties of translating Joseph Haven's Mental Philosophy and writes that Amane created neologisms for words "such as "reason", "sensibility", "sense", and "understanding"", this reader cannot help wondering what words Amane actually created in Japanese for these terms (pp. 82-83). The "Glossary of Translation Words" beginning on p. 249 is not much help in this context, since it contains only Japanese words in Roman letters and characters.

Howland maintains a sometimes uneven balance between writing for historians, with no specific knowledge of Japan (or Japanese), and writing for specialists in East Asia or in translation studies. Each of these groups will definitely gain something from the book, but in its totality, it may only genuinely appeal to other scholars specializing in the Meiji period.

Citation: Kirsten Refsing. "Review of Douglas R. Howland, Translating the West: Language and Political Reason in Nineteenth-Century Japan," H-US-Japan, H-Net Reviews, August, 2002. URL: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=180151030808999.

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http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm

If English was written like Chinese

The English spelling system is such a pain, we'd might as well switch to hanzi-- Chinese characters. How should we go about it?

Japanese style

One way would be to use hanzi directly, asthe Japanese do. For instance, we'd write "work" as, and "ruler" as. Chinese and Japanese borrowings could be written using the original hanzi, e.g. "gung-ho" would be, and "tycoon" as.

You can already see that this is going to be tricky. We've just given two readings, for instance-- /wrk/ and /gûng/-- and  two as well-- /rulr/ and /kun/.

Proper names will be a problem as well. Again, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean names already have hanzi forms-- e.g. for the name of the bodaciously cute singer Faye Wong-- but for English names we'd have no better recourse than to spell things out using the nearest Chinese syllables. For instance, Winston Churchill would be represented by hanzi that would be transliterated Wensuteng Chuerqilu.

Chinese style

Maybe there's a better approach. Instead of using hanzi directly, let's invent a new system-- we'll call it yingzi, "English characters"-- that would work for English exactly as hanzi works for Chinese.

The basic principle will be, one yingzi for a syllable with a particular meaning. So two, to, and too will each have their own yingzi. (If we were creating a syllabary, by contrast, we'd write all three with the same symbol, the one for /tu/.)

Does that mean we need a completely separate symbol for each of the thousands of possible English syllables? Not at all. We can simplify the task enormously with one more principle: syllables that rhyme can have yingzi that are variations on a theme.

Little pictures

You've been reading for half a page and are probably wondering why I haven't yet talked about pictograms. When do we get to draw little pictures?

Well, now's the time. Let's draw pictures. For instance:

horse mount king man child bug sun moon tree

When the pictures are abstract we can call them "ideograms", but they still represent particular English morphemes:

one un- per

Some of our pictures will be kind of clever. For instance, woods repeats the yingzi for tree, while  east is a little picture of the sun rising through the trees. guilt is a picture of a man inside an enclosure.

Let's not go crazy, however. We only need a thousand or so, and we'll restrict ourselves to fairly simple, one-syllable words. We'll derive the vast majority of our yingzi from this basic stock of pictures.

Phonetic classes

Basically each simple yingzi will be the basis for an open-ended set of yingzi, used for a set of rhyming syllables. For instance, the king character will generate the family king, thing, sing, sling, sting, shing(le).

It would be awfully confusing to use for all of these. Instead we'll use it only for king, which will be the phonetic for this set, and add little signs called radicals to distinguish the rest. Examples:

sing will be, formed by adding the mouth radical sting will be, formed by adding the bug radical (since insects sting) shing (the first syllable in shingle) will be, formed using the roof radical sling will be formed using the spear radical. When we add a radical, we scrunch up the yingzi so the whole thing still fits into a square. All characters, however complex, fit into the same size box. "Rhyming" isn't quite accurate. We don't want each family of words to get too large; so we'll restrict a single family to either voiced or unvoiced initial consonants.

So, bring, ring, Bing, wing, zing will form a separate family of yingzi, based on the character wing.

Overlaps and secondary derivations The yingzi formed from a single phonetic will all rhyme; but not all syllables that rhyme will necessarily have the same yingzi. This is largely because we started with a set of pictograms chosen for their pictorial rather than phonetic qualities; but it also adds visual distinctions to the script, and thus aids the reader. (It rather burdens the writer; but heck, everyone does a lot more reading than writing.)

For instance, the phonetic un- will be used for fun, ton, pun, thun(der), Hun, etc. But sun will have its own yingzi,, and this will be used for son, shun, stun, spun. For instance, sun plus the man radical makes son, and sun with the fight radical is used for  shun.

Moreover, a compound yingzi may itself be used as a phonetic with its own set of yingzi. The shun character, for instance, will be used with the work radical to form -tion, used to spell this common suffix, as in  section.

Radicals Where do the radicals come from? For the most part they are either simple characters (e.g king, work), or abbreviations of characters; for instance the character net is abbreviated to  when used as a radical.

The set of radicals is not unlimited; there is in fact a fixed set of 214 of them. The total number of yingzi that belong to one phonetic set is thus absolutely limited to 214. No set will actually have this number of yingzi, though some will have a few dozen.

(However, the potential number of yingzi is still unlimited, because we can always choose a compound yingzi as a new phonetic, and generate a new set of rhyming yingzi from it.)

Because the set of radicals is limited, a really good radical will not always be available to distinguish the yingzi in a rhyming set. We'll just choose the best one we can. In addition, when choosing radicals we will rely on the etymological meaning of a word, which may not always match its current meaning. For instance, the word villain originally meant peasant, and so the sign for vill- uses the field radical (added to the phonetic bill).

The yingzi that use a particular radical will form a class of their own-- a sort of meaning class. We can consider the entire English language to be divided into 214 meaning categories. For instance, every yingzi that uses the bug radical will have something to do (at least etymologically) with insects or reptiles. However, since the number of radicals is so limited, and because the choice of radical is sometimes quirky, the resulting sets will be rather vague and eccentric.

Guessing at an unknown character

There will be tens of thousands of yingzi; but we must not let this frighten us. There are tens of thousands of conventional spellings, too, but despite what the wiseacres say, it would be absurd to say that there's no logic to English orthography at all. Likewise, the yingzi themselves are not the basic graphical units or graphemes of the writing system; the phonetics and radicals are.

Readers can make use of this fact to guess the pronunciation of an unknown character. For instance, is a straightforward combination of the  speech radical with the phonetic  purse. A type of speaking that rhymes with purse-- curse, of course.

Or,, a combination of the plant radical with the guilt phonetic. Something about plants that rhymes with guilt? This one is a bit harder-- wilt.

-- a plant (radical plant) that rhymes with speech-- is easy: peach. But note that speech, which we used as a radical above, is used as a phonetic here.

Since there are many more phonetics than radicals, the information content of the radical is much less than that of the phonetic. If you knew only the radical for an unknown character, you can only narrow down the meaning to 1/214 of the lexicon; if you knew only the phonetic, you could narrow it down much further, since there are more than a thousand phonetics.

Polysyllabic words

Where possible we will divide a word into morphemes. For instance outsider breaks into out + side + -er; reshipment is re- + ship + -ment.

How do we handle morphemes of more than one syllable? We simply create a yingzi for each syllable. For instance, person would be expressed as. The first character is based on per, with the addition of the man radical; the second is  sun with the addition of the same radical.

A polysyllabic morpheme, in fact, can generally be recognized because all the syllables have the same radical. For instance, insect consists of in and sect, each with the addition of the bug radical. (Note that sect is itself a compound character, formed from the rite radical with the specked phonetic.)

Inflections How about inflections that don't form a full syllable, such as plural -s? It would be pretty tiresome, even with the add-a-radical trick, to create thousands of yingzi for syllables that just happen to have a final -s.

Note, however, that the plural morpheme sometimes takes up its own syllable, as in grasses, rashes. So why not use the yingzi for is, which is ? Of course, is and -s are both pretty common, so we should add a little dot to the character to represent final -s: So peach is, peaches is ; sun is , suns is. We can use a similar strategy for other inflections.

Foreign words Very old borrowings (e.g. the mass of words borrowed in medieval and Renaissance times from French and Latin) will be treated like native words. We've already seen examples like peach, villain, insect, and person.

Words borrowed more recently, however, won't get their own radical+phonetic compounds. Instead we'll represent them, syllable by syllable, using the nearest existing characters. For instance, Peking will be represented as. The first character is the first syllable of pecan (that is, pe-; phonetic see, radical gourd), and the second is the word king. The name Fellini will be written, composed of the yinzi fell, lean, knee. (You may amuse yourself working out what the phonetics and radicals are for these three characters.)

Dictionaries English dictionaries would no longer be arranged alphabetically, of course, since we're no longer using an alphabet. They'll be organized by radical.

The 214 radicals are ordered according to the number of strokes needed to draw them. Radicals of one stroke (e.g. http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/one.gif one or http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/per.gif per ) come first, followed by radicals of two strokes (e.g. http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/not.gif un-), and so on, up to monstrosities like http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/toad.gif toad, which has 20 strokes.

The section for each radical is also organized by stroke number. Under the plant radical, for instance, the first entry is http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/plant.gif plant itself, followed by characters with one extra stroke (like http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/dron.gif dron, the last character in rhododendron), then characters with two strokes, and so on (up to http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/toads.gif, the first character in toadstool).

Note that there are no main entries for what we're used to calling words at all. There wouldn't be a main entry at all for a word like person, for instance. There would be an entry for the man radical; under it a sub-entry for the character per, and person would be listed as a sub-sub-entry under that.

Thinking in yingzi The nature of the writing system would encourage lexicographers (and English speakers) to think of everything in the language as built out of yingzi. There wouldn't seem to be a great difference between "words" like storehouse, storage, restore and "expressions" like shoe store, store up, store detective, store manager; or between blackboard and black eye, or between alphabet and alpha male.

Many morphemes that now live out a shadowy existence, forever bound to other morphemes, would take on an independent existence; for instance the volve in revolve, evolve, involve, devolve, which would have its own yingzi, and would seem as much a "word" or component of the language as the match in rematch, mismatch, unmatch. There would be a tendency to describe the meanings, vague or miscellaneous as they might be, for such characters.

This might seem sensible and even wise for a morpheme like volve, which after all derives from a real Latin root meaning roll; but there would be other, more dubious applications. For instance, the son in person was represented by http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/son.gif, which happens to be the yingzi for son. It will be almost impossible not to assume that person derives from son; but historically it's just a coincidence; person derives from Latin and has nothing to do with son.

Worse yet, the -cuit of biscuit and circuit might be written with the same character (a derivative of kit), and a meaning sought for it-- perhaps 'round', since biscuits are round and circuits involve going round. Again, etymologically this is nonsense.

Words, perceived as compounds, might lend themselves to abbreviation. After all, why write two yingzi when one will do, especially if it unmistakably implies its partner? For instance, language would be a two-character word http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/lang.gif http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/gwidge.gif, each character defined only as part of this compound and used nowhere else in the language. If you've written lang, you must write gwidge next. You might as well just write http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/lang.gif lang and leave it at that. Ultimately of course http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/lang.gif will acquire a meaning of its own-- namely language. And for consistency's sake lexicographers might well give gwidge a meaning of its own as well--namely, language.

The complexities of the writing system, the inherent interest of the pictorial elements, the cleverness inherent in graphic compounds like woods and the radical-phonetic system, and even sociological facts such as the time it takes to learn the system, and the fact that English speakers of all nations can use it whatever their native dialect, would also combine to give the writing system an overwhelming character of its own. It would be seen as more important than speech; there would even be a tendency to think of words as derived from characters rather than the other way around.

If someone asks where a word comes from, we (now) think of its original phonetic form; we say for instance that language comes from French langage, itself derived from Latin lingua 'tongue', which in turn comes from Proto-Indo-European dnghu. With the yingzi system, people would be tempted instead to give what we might call the graphic etymology. They'd say that lang derives from the speech radical and the gang phonetic, and that the latter is actually a picture of a gang-- a reduplication of the man character. That is indeed where http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/lang.gif comes from, but not lang, which did not derive from it! (But it wouldn't even be easy to make this point in yingzi-- how do you distinguish lang from http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/lang.gif if you can't even write "lang" without writing the character?)

A word is a word is a word

Does all this mean that words are cultural constructs or that the concept of a word would no longer apply to English written in yingzi? Not at all. A word is still a useful linguistic concept-- or rather a series of overlapping concepts. By word linguists may mean one or all of the following:

a phonological unit-- e.g. something with one stress accent or one pitch contour; or a unit within which intervocalic stops get voiced. the abstraction underlying a set of morphological forms (e.g. write underlying write, writes, writing, written, wrote). an element which can stand alone (e.g. in response to a suitably chosen question), as suffixes or bound morphemes cannot. a morphological unit you can't insert other morphemes into (e.g. black dog is not a word since you can change it to black, tired dog; but you can't turn blackbird into blacktiredbird) an expression with a conventional meaning-- something that has to be defined in the mental lexicon (this sense is also called a lexeme). A moment's thought should show that these definitions may or may not coincide even in English; and that even where they do they may not coincide with the typographical or lexicographical notion of a word. The latter idea-- roughly 'something with spaces around it'-- is of little interest to linguists since it depends on the writing system. That makes it useless for describing most of the languages of the world; and even for written languages it's pretty arbitrary, as this page should show. (Everything you know about writing English would change if we adopted yingzi instead.)

It's safe to say, however, that such definitions would seem fairly abstract in a yingzi system. Word might become a technical term, like morpheme or lexeme. Or it might be identified with a yingzi (a written character); or be abstracted into a more vaguely defined linguistic element, applicable to anything from a character to a compound to a whole phrase.

Hey, did I just learn something about Chinese?

I've attempted in this sketch to lay out, by analogy, the nature and structure of the Chinese writing system. All of the concepts apply:

the limited role of pictograms the clever compound pictures (indeed all three examples are from Chinese) the phonetic-and-radical system (97% of Chinese characters work this way) the inclusion of radicals as part of the character (rather than as separate symbols, as in cuneiform or hieroglyphic writing) the relative information content of radicals and phonetics compounds used as secondary phonetics the handling of multisyllabic and foreign words the handling of subsyllabic morphemes (the model here is Mandarin -r, represented by ér) the organization of dictionaries (in fact, the graphic at the top of the page shows part of the radical index for a Chinese dictionary, organized by stroke count) the psychological effects. The radicals named are all also Chinese radicals. The phonetics are not, of course, since the phonetics in hanzi refer to the sounds of Chinese words, not English ones. But I tried to pick phonetics which would also be phonetics in Chinese (e.g. sun, king, wing, tree, one, east, field, bill).

There are differences, too. For instance, I haven't made any attempt to make my yingzi look like hanzi.

The phonetic sets of Chinese are not exactly based on rhymes. Karlgren explains that the hanzi belonging to one set had homorganic initial consonants (e.g. k, g), the same main vowel, and the same final consonant.

I've also underreported the complexity (and arguably the inefficiency) of the Chinese script in several important ways:

The phonetic sets in Chinese, though still useful, are two thousand years out of date. It's as if my yingzi phonetics had to rhyme in Proto-Germanic, not in modern English. The scribes who devised hanzi often went wild adding radicals, creating multiple characters for what are etymologically the same root. Four milennia have reduced the pictorial content of the hanzi primitives almost to nil. What the "pictograms" are pictures of is often evident only to the scholar. Clear and precise handwriting is by no means a virtue in Chinese; the most admired style, câoshu, is highly simplified, suggesting rather than delineating the characters intended. The People's Republic has simplified many of the traditional hanzi; and this reform has been accepted in Singapore but not in Taiwan or Hong Kong. It's as if the US had its own versions of a large fraction of English yingzi. I also haven't gotten into the many additional complications engendered when hanzi were adopted by Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese; for more on that see John DeFrancis's The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy.

In some respects, however, yingzi are harder than hanzi. For instance, English has many more multisyllabic morphemes than Chinese. Only about 10% of Chinese morphemes are more than one syllable long. Also, English has borrowed so much that it often has five or six morphemes where Chinese would have just one-- compare wáng vs. king, regal, royal, regicide, Rex, or zì vs. word, verb, logograph, bon mot.

--Mark Rosenfelder

+++

http://www.homepages.indiana.edu/041301/text/auger.html

The connections of language, thought and social structure

By studying language, even the pre-historic, linguists discover a wealth of societal information By Susan Williams

Auger Languages are tools that allow speakers to communicate and exchange information. So, they must contain words and expressions that refer to the various elements present in their environments. A word is a word is a word—not!

To turn a phrase, there is much more to the utterance of a single word than meets the tongue.

Ask Julie Auger, assistant professor of linguistics and French at IU Bloomington. Auger is a sociolinguist whose specialization is variation studies. Her research deals with spoken French and a little known language spoken in France called Picard. She also teaches about language and gender.

Not every linguist agrees upon how sociolinguistics fits into the study of the human language faculty. Some see it standing along side of other sub-disciplines, such as morphology, syntax, phonology, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics and anthropolotical linguistics. Others, however, believe that sociolinguistics is a redundant term, that all linguistics must be social. In any case, everyone agrees that we can learn something about a society by studying its language.

“Languages are tools that allow speakers to communicate and exchange information,” said Auger, “So, they must contain words and expressions that refer to the various elements present in their environments.

“The existence of a word reflects the existence of a thing that is recognized as an entity different from some other thing. For example, the existence of the words “water,” “ice,” “snow” and “steam” in English means that English speakers recognize four different things, even though all these things consist of H2O. The reverse is not necessarily true, however. Even if a single word is used for two things, it doesn’t mean that the difference between them is not recognized, so one must be very careful,” said Auger, who points out that while the word “leg” can be used in a general sense, we clearly recognize that the leg of a table and a dog’s leg are not the same.

Sometimes, said Auger, to determine the values of a society, it’s worth looking at how language evolves, how words change in meaning.

“In French, the word ‘crétin,’ which is a regional form of the word meaning ‘Christian,’ has come to mean ‘stupid,’ probably because the Christian habit of not hitting back was seen as a sign of weakness and stupidity,” she said.

Studying the language of a lost culture may not hold its every key, but it still can be revealing. According to Auger, words that a linguist can reconstruct indicate the animals, plants, tools and other objects that were present in the lives of the people who spoke that language. That information can help geographically locate where the language used to be spoken.

“For example, we have been trying to learn more about the people who spoke the language that is the common ancestor of Hindi, Greek, Parsi, Russian, English, French, Albanian and so many other languages spoken in Asia and in Europe,” said Auger. “Based on the names of animals and plants that we believe existed in that pre-historic language, we have a vague idea that these people lived in the temperate forest of northern or eastern Europe.”

Linguistics can also provide important information concerning who was in contact with whom at a certain time. And also which cultures were more powerful and/or prestigious than others.

“French borrowed many words from Italian during the 15th and 16th centuries because Italian culture was so advanced at that time,” said Auger. “Because this took place not such a long time ago, we have many different ways of knowing about this. But, when contact took place 2,000 or more years ago, sometimes the only way we know that group A knew and talked to group B is if we find a word from one language in the other.”

Relatively new as a field of linguistics, but at least as old as Adam and Eve themselves as a concept, is the study of how men and women use language differently. Along with other areas of gender studies, this specialty promises a new wealth of societal information, including whether or not the social changes that are taking place in the roles of women and men are reflected in language. But here, and in all other areas of linguistic study, research will proceed with caution.

“Any analysis we come up with is only a theory,” said Auger, “We must always be ready to admit the existence of alternative theories and be ready to revise our theory. We also must seek confirmation from other disciplines whenever possible—archaeology, sociology, anthropology and genetics, for instance.

“There is a connection between language, thought and social structure, but this connection is incomplete and imperfect.”

title: User:Vuara/A word is a word is a word


text:
Latin/Lesson 2-Active v Passive

A verb's voice shows the relationship between the subject and the action expressed by the verb. Latin has two voices: active and passive.

In the active voice, the subject of the clause performs the verb on something else (the object), e.g., "The girl sees the boy."

In the passive voice, the subject of the sentence receives the action of the verb, e.g., "The boy is seen by the girl."

The personal endings in the active voice are: -ō/-m, -s, -t, -mus, -tis, -nt.

The personal endings in the passive voice (present, imperfect, future) are: -r, -ris, -tur, -mur, -mini, -ntur. In the perfect, pluperfect and future perfect, the passive voice is formed by the fourth principal part plus the proper forms of sum, esse. For the perfect tense, use the present forms of esse, for the pluperfect use the imperfect forms of esse, and for the future perfect use the future forms of esse. The fourth principal part, when used in a passive construction, acts as a first-second declension adjective and is declined accordingly.

As stated before, when the passive voice is used, the subject receives the action of the verb from another agent. This agent, when it is a person, is expressed by the preposition ā/ab plus the ablative case. This construction is called the ablative of personal agent. The ablative of cause is used without a preposition when the agent is not a person.

Examples:

 * Active: Puella puerum videt. (The girl sees the boy.)

 * Passive: Puer ā puellā vidētur. (The boy is seen by the girl.)
 * Puella takes ā and the ablative, as it is a personal agent.

 * Active: Timor virum capit. (Fear seizes the man.)

 * Passive: Vir timore capitur. (The man is seized by fear.)
 * Timore is ablative of cause.

 * Active: Hostēs urbem oppugnābant. (The enemies were attacking the city.)

 * Passive: Urbs ab hostibus oppūgnābātur. (The city was being attacked by the enemies.)

Deponent verbs
Some verbs are always passive in form, even though they have an active meaning. For example:

 * filius agricolam sequitur - The son follows the farmer
 * sol ortus est - The sun has risen
 * agricolae hostes verentur - The farmers fear the enemies
 * gladio usus sum - I used a sword

Some, called semi-deponent verbs, take on a passive form on only in the perfect. For example:

 * colono confido - I trust the farmer
 * colono confisus sum - I trusted the farmer

Note that some deponent and semi-deponent verbs take the accusative case (eg. vereor, vereri, veritus sum = I fear), some the ablative (eg. utor, uti, usus sum = I use) and some the dative (eg. confido, confidere, confisus sum = I trust). When you first encounter such a verb in Latin, be sure to remember the case of the object the verb is taking along with its spelling and meaning.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Latin/Lesson 2-Active v Passive


text:
Cookbook:Cereal

The term cereal is an ambiguous term in cooking that can refer to one of the following:

 * Breakfast cereal
 * Cereal grain

title: Cookbook:Cereal


text:
Cookbook:Lasagne with Bean Sauce

| Pasta Recipes | Vegetarian

Ingredients

 * ½ Tbsp olive oil
 * ½ small onion, minced
 * 1 can (400 g/15 oz) navy beans, drained and chopped
 * ½ tsp oregano
 * ¼ tsp pepper
 * 1 package lasagna noodles
 * 240 ml (1 cup) cottage cheese or ricotta cheese
 * 1 clove garlic, minced
 * 240 g (1 cup) tomato sauce
 * 240 g (1 cup) tomato purée
 * 1 Tbsp tomato paste
 * ½ tsp dried basil
 * 100–170 g (4–6 oz) mozzarella cheese, grated
 * 60 ml (¼ cup) grated Parmesan cheese

Procedure

 * 1) Boil the lasagna noodles.
 * 2) Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).
 * 3) Sauté garlic and onions.
 * 4) Add the chopped beans and cook for 5 minutes.
 * 5) Add tomato sauce, tomato purée, tomato paste, oregano, basil, and pepper, and cook for 5 minutes.
 * 6) In a 30 x 20 cm (13 x 9 in) baking dish, form a layer using half the noodles, sauce, cottage cheese, and mozzarella. Repeat to form a second layer.
 * 7) Sprinkle top with Parmesan cheese.
 * 8) Bake uncovered at 180°C (350°F) for 25 minutes, until noodles are tender and sauce is bubbling.

title: Cookbook:Lasagne with Bean Sauce


text:
Cookbook:Meatloaf

| Meat Recipes

Meat loaf is a meat dish, usually cooked in a bread loaf pan, made from ground beef and some sort of binder, often eggs, and seasoned with various spices and sauces. It is generally made by simply blending all ingredients together in a bowl, and is thus a quick and easy dish to prepare.

There are several recipes for meatloaf available in this cookbook:
 * Meatloaf I; with Worcestershire sauce and mushrooms.
 * Meatloaf II; a basic meat loaf.
 * Meatloaf III; a more basic meat loaf.
 * Potato Meat Loaf, Cheeseburger with potatoes in every slice!
 * Meatloaf IV; a meat loaf baked in a Dutch oven or glass baking pan.
 * Meatloaf V; a meat loaf using chickpeas or beans to stretch the meat. Also includes a vegan variant.
 * Meatloaf of Austria (Faschierter Braten)
 * Meatloaf Dinner

Kookboek/Vleesbrood

title: Cookbook:Meatloaf


text:
General Mechanics/Momentum

Changing mass
So far we've assumed that the mass of the objects being considered is constant, which is not always true. Mass is conserved overall, but it can be useful to consider objects, such as rockets, which are losing or gaining mass.

We can work out how to extend Newton's second law to this situation by considering a rocket two ways, as a single object of variable mass, and as two objects of fixed mass which are being pushed apart.

We find that

Force is the rate of change of a quantity, $$m\vec v$$, which we call linear momentum.

Newton's third law
Newton's third law says that the force, $$F_{12}$$ exerted by a mass $$m_1$$, on a second mass $$m_2$$ , is equal and opposite to the force $$F_{21}$$ exerted by the second mass on the first.

if there are no external forces on the two bodies. We can add the two momenta together to get,

so the total linear momentum is conserved.

Ultimately, this is consequence of space being homogeneous.

Centre of mass
Suppose two constant masses are subject to external forces, $$\vec{F}_1,\vec{F}_2$$

Then the total force on the system, $$\vec F$$, is

because the internal forces cancel out.

If the two masses are considered as one system, $$\vec F$$ should be the product of the total mass and $$\bar a$$, the average acceleration, which we expect to be related to some kind of average position.

The average acceleration is the second derivative of the average position, weighted by mass.

This average position is called the centre of mass, and accelerates at the same rate as if it had the total mass of the system, and were subject to the total force.

We can extend this to any number of masses under arbitrary external and internal forces.

 * we have $$n$$ objects, mass $$m_1\ldots,m_n$$, total mass $$M$$
 * each mass $$m_i$$ is at point $$r_i$$
 * each mass $$m_i$$ is subject to an external force $$F_i$$
 * the internal force exerted by mass $$m_j$$ on mass $$m_i$$ is $$F_{ij}$$

then the position of the centre of mass $$R$$ is

We can now take the second derivative of $$R$$

But the sum of all the internal forces is zero, because Newton's third law makes them cancel in pairs. Thus, the second term in the above equation drops out and we are left with:

The centre of mass always moves like a body of the same total mass under the total external force, irrespective of the internal forces.

authors: יהודה שמחה ולדמן

title: General Mechanics/Momentum


text:
Cookbook:Southwestern Scramble

 * United States | Breakfast

A Southwestern Scramble is a scrambled eggs recipe with many spicy ingredients, such as onions and chilis. For a complete breakfast, serve with sliced, fried wiejska (Polish sausage), toast, and orange juice.

Ingredients

 * 8 eggs
 * 2 tbsp (30 ml) milk
 * Butter, margarine, or cooking spray, for frying pan
 * 1 medium red onion, chopped
 * 1 medium green chile pepper, such as jalapeño, seeded and chopped
 * 1 green bell pepper, seeded and sliced
 * Salt, to taste
 * Black pepper, to taste
 * Serve with hot sauce, such as Tabasco sauce

Procedure

 * 1) Crack the eggs into a large mixing bowl, add the milk, and beat until well combined.
 * 2) Place a large frying pan over medium heat, add the butter, margarine, or cooking spray, and allow to melt. Add the onions, chili, and bell pepper, and sauté for 2–4 minutes.
 * 3) Add the eggs to the pan, and allow to cook for 30 seconds to 1 minute, until they just begin to set.
 * 4) Turn the heat up to high, and begin scrambling the eggs by scraping the bottom of the pan with a spatula and folding the cooked egg into the egg mixture.
 * 5) When the eggs are still moist, but mostly cooked, remove from the fire and plate.
 * 6) Serve while still hot.

Notes, tips, and variations

 * To adjust the spiciness, use more or fewer chili peppers, or use types varying levels of heat.
 * The chilis are seeded because of the intense heat in the seeds, where the majority of the spicy capsaicin is. The seeds can be left in, but the scramble will be much hotter.
 * Be sure to scrape the entire bottom of the pan, as well as the sides. Otherwise, those areas where the egg is not scraped will burn.
 * Carryover heat will continue to cook the eggs, so they should be removed from the fire while still slightly underdone, or they will be overcooked.

title: Cookbook:Southwestern Scramble


text:
User:Perl~enwikibooks/Fahrenheit 451/review

Fahrenheit 451 is an excellent science-fiction novel. If you liked George Orwell's 1984, this is a must-read. The novel covers a range of issues including censorship, war, the impact of technology on society, and life in general.

I enjoyed reading this novel, and could not put it down once I started it. I love science-fiction, so I am biased in this review, but my friend, who doesn't particulary care for science fiction, was the one who persuaded me to read this great book.

This book is a classic and should be a required novel for all high schoolers(in many states it is). I urge you to take the time to read this story. You will be glad that you did.

Next (Resources) >


text:
Talk:GCSE Science/Magnetic effects of a current

I just thought people should know that the following statement from this page on electromagnets is wrong:

''Rermember current flows from thwe positive to the negative terminals on the power pack. If the current''

The negative pole on a battery is called negative because of the build-up of excess electrons that have a negative charge, and it is the electrons that "flow" from the negative pole to the positive. The terms positive and negative were assigned according to properties observed in experiments with static electricity before anyone understood what was causing the phenonema. By the time it was discovered that it was an excessive of particles (now called electrons) that caused the effect, that end had already been assigned the label "negative" giving us the image of an absence of substance. It is a very common misunderstanding to think electricity "flows" (another misunderstanding)from positive (in popular language indicating having more of something) to negative (an area of less), when this is actually the opposite of what happens.

Bruce Williams Naselle, WA             USA

You are quite right that electrons flow from negative to positive. However current flows from positive to negative. It's just terminology left over from the days when we didn't know about electrons. It's unfortunate, but we are stuck with it. Theresa knott 20:07, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Graphics and Grips
I literally stared at the "N" and "S" graphics for minutes until it dawned on me what was trying to be conveyed. Might I suggest that the N and S symbols are scaled to fit in two, same diameter circles (dotted) and graphically treated to fit the circle. Then I'm sure I'd have a more rapid path to enlightenment.

On another note: I know about a right-hand grip technique to aid memory of polarity but does everyone? Again, might I suggest a graphic here?

KeithF 00:47, 14 October 2006 (UTC)


text:
User:Ronald raygun

Maths/Physics Major at QUT, Brisbane, Australia.

I'll try and get some sections started on Physics books, especially those with a mathematic approach to it. I'm new to LaTeX, so forgive me if my formatting is poor.

title: User:Ronald raygun


text:
Portuguese/Contents/Numbers

<< Portuguese:Contents

title: Portuguese/Contents/Numbers


text:
Talk:French/Lessons/Weather

Untitled
It might be more useful to say that hair is 'les cheveux', since we almost always refer to our hair that way (il a les cheveux gris etc).

a small error
Vous allez à l'école? ne se prononce pas vouzahlayzah car ça fait pas très joli les 2 liaisons consécutives mais plutôt vouzahlay ah Merrheim 17:16, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

 * Corrigé, merci.

"L'éclairage" doesn't mean lightning at all, it's used to describe a light level or a light source... Sorry, I don't know any exact translation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.64.65.123 (discuss • contribs)

Is this correct?
Quoted from page: '''The contractions do not occurr with the la, or with any contracted pronoun:

à + la = à la

à + l' = à l'

de + la = de la

de + l' = d' '''

The final d' seems incorrect; I'm only a student, but should that be de l' ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.244.175.218 (discuss • contribs)

 * That was a typo (as you could have told from the leading sentence.) --Sigma 7 (talk) 03:48, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Mistake
je ne le vole pas is NOT I did not steal it. It is I do not steal it. If you want to say I did not steal it, you have to write that as Je ne l'ai pas volé or Volé(e)according to the gender of the subject.This is equal to I have not stolen it. Dueepjs (discuss • contribs) 10:57, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I think you may be reading an old version of this lesson, as "je ne le vole pas" is not present in the current text. Recent Runes (discuss • contribs) 23:17, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

title: Talk:French/Lessons/Weather


text:
XML - Managing Data Exchange/Web Services

Web Services Overview
Web Services are a new breed of Web application. They are self-contained, self-describing, modular applications that can be published, located, and invoked across the Web. Web services perform functions, which can be anything from simple requests to complicated business processes. Once a Web service is deployed, other applications (and other Web services) can discover and invoke the deployed service. Web services make use of XML to describe the request and response, and HTTP as its network transport.

The primary difference between a Web Service and a web application relates to collaboration. Web applications are simply business applications which are located or invoked using web protocols. Similarly, Web Services also perform computing functions remotely over a network. However, Web Services use internet protocols with the specific intent of enabling inter operable machine to machine coordination.

Web Services have emerged as a solution to problems associated with distributed computing. Distributed computing is the use of multiple systems to perform a function rather than having a single system perform it. The previous technologies used in distributed computing, primarily Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM), had some limitations. For example, neither has achieved complete platform independence or easy transport over firewalls. Additionally, DCOM is not vendor independent, being a Microsoft product.

Some of the primary needs for a distributed computing standard were:

 Cross-platform support for Business to Business, as well as internal, communication. Concordance with existing Internet infrastructure as much as possible. Scalability, both in number and complexity of nodes. Internalization. Tolerance of failure. Vendor independence. Suitability for trivial and non-trivial requests.

Over time, business information systems became highly configured and differentiated. This inevitably made system interaction extremely costly and time consuming. Developers began realizing the benefits of standardizing Web Service development. Using web standards seemed to be an intuitive and logical step toward attaining these goals. Web standards already provided a platform independent means for system communication and were readily accepted by information system users.

The end result was the development of Web Services. A Web Service forms a distributed environment, in which objects can be accessed remotely via standardized interfaces. It uses a three-tiered model, defining a service provider, a service consumer, and a service broker. This allows the Web Service to be a loose relationship, so that if a service provider goes down, the broker can always direct consumers to another one. Similarly, there are many brokers, so consumers can always find an available one. For communication, Web Services use open Web standards: TCP/IP, HTTP, and XML based SOAP.

At higher levels technologies such as XAML, XLANG, (transactional support for complex web transactions involving multiple web services) and XKMS (ongoing work by Microsoft and Verisign to support authentication and registration) might be added.

SOAP

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is a method for sending information to and from Web Services in an extensible format. SOAP can be used to send information or remote procedure calls encoded as XML. Essentially, SOAP serves as a universally accepted method of communication with web services. Businesses adhere to the SOAP conventions in order to simplify the process of interacting with Web Services.

A SOAP message contains either a request method for invoking a Web Service, or contains response information to a Web Service request.

Adhering to this layout when developing independent Web Services provides notable benefits to the businesses. Due to the fact that Web Applications are designed to be utilized by a myriad of actors, developers want them to be easily adoptable. Using established and familiar standards of communication ultimately reduces the amount of effort it takes users to effectively interact with a Web Service.

The SOAP Envelope is used for defining and organizing the content contained in Web Service messages. Primarily, the SOAP envelope serves to indicate that the specified document will be used for service interaction. It contains an optional SOAP Header and a SOAP Body. Messages are sent in the SOAP body, and the SOAP head is used for sending other information that wouldn't be expected in the body. For example, if the SOAP:actor attribute is present in the SOAP header, it indicates who the recipient of the message should be.

A web service transaction involves a SOAP request and a SOAP response. The example we will be using is a Web Service provided by Weather.gov. The input is latitude, longitude, a start date, how many days of forecast information desired, and the format of the data. The SOAP request will look like this:

The startDate was left empty because this will automatically get the most recent data. The format data type is not defined because it is defined in the WSDL document.

The response SOAP looks like this.

SOAP handles data by encoding it on the sender side and decoding it on the receiver side. The data types handled by SOAP are based on the W3C XML Schema specification. Simple types include strings, integers, floats, and doubles, while compound types are made up of primitive types.

Because they are text based, SOAP messages generally have no problem getting through firewalls or other barriers. They are the ideal way to pass information to and from web services.

Service Description - WSDL
Web Service Description Language (WSDL) was created to provide information about how to connect to and query a specific Web Service. This document also adheres to strict formatting and organizational guidelines. However, the methods, parameters, and service information are application specific. Web Services perform different functionality and contain independent information, however they are all organized the same way. By creating a standard organizational architecture for these services, developers can effectively invoke and utilize them with little to no familiarization. To use a web service, a developer can follow the design standards of the WSDL to easily determine all the information and procedures associated with its usage.

Essentially, a WSDL document serves as an instruction for interacting with a Web Service. It contains no application logic, giving the service a level of autonomy. This enables users to effectively interact with the service without having to understand its inner workings.

The following is an example of a WSDL file for a web service that provides a temperature, given a U.S. zip code.

The WSDL file defines a service, made up of different endpoints, called ports. The port is made up of a network address and a binding.

The binding identifies the binding style and protocol for each operation. In this case, it uses Remote Procedure Call style binding, using SOAP.

Port Types are abstract collections of operations. In this case, the operation is getTemp.

Finally, messages are used by the operations to communicate - in other words, to pass parameters and return values.

From the WSDL file, a consumer should be able to access data in a web service.

For a more detailed analysis of how this particular web service, please visit Weather.gov

Service Discovery - UDDI
You've seen how WSDL can be used to share interface definitions for Web Services, but how do you go about finding a Web Service in the first place? There are countless independent Web Services that are developed and maintained by just as many different organizations. Upon adopting Web Service practices and methodologies, developers sought to foster the involvement and creative reuse of their systems. It soon became apparent that there was a need for an enumerated record of these services and their respective locations. This information would empower developers to leverage the best practices and processes of Web Services quickly and easily. Additionally, having a central reference of current Web Service capabilities enables developers avoid developing redundant applications.

UDDI defines registries in which services can be published and found. The UDDI specification was creaed by Microsoft, Ariba, and IBM. UDDI defines a data structure and Application Programming Interface (API).

In the three-tier model mentioned before, UDDI is the service broker. Its function is to enable service consumers to find appropriate service providers.

Connecting to UDDI registries using Java can be accomplished through the Java API for XML Registries (JAXR). JAXR creates a layer of abstraction, so that it can be used with UDDI and other types of XML Registries, such as the ebXML Registry and Repository standard.

Using Java With Web Services
To execute a SOAP message, an application must be used to communicate with the service provider. Due to its flexibility, almost any programming language can be used to execute SOAP message. For our purposes, however, we will be focusing on using Java to interact with Web Services.

Using Java with web services requires some external libraries.

Apache SOAP Toolkit

Java Mail Framework

JavaBeans Activation Framework

Xerces XML parser

Let's go through using Java to query the Temperature Web Service we talked about earlier.

This Java code effectively hides all the SOAP from the user. It invokes the target object by name and URL, and sets the parameter zipcode. But what does the underlying SOAP Request look like?

As you see, the SOAP request uses the parameters passed in by the Java Call to fill out the SOAP envelope and direct the message. Similarly, the response comes back into the Java program as '70.0'. The response SOAP is also hidden by the Java program.

Here's an additional example of using Java and SOAP to interact with Web Services. This particular Web Service is called the "US Zip Validator" and takes a ZipCode as a parameter, which then returns a corresponding latitude and longitude. When developing applications to interact with Web Services, the first step should be to review the WSDL document.

The WSDL document for this service is located here: http://www.webservicemart.com/uszip.asmx?WSDL

This document will contain all the necessary instructions for interacting with the "US Zip Validator" Web Service.

SOAPClient4XG

Modified by - Duncan McAllister From: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-soapcl/

This Java class refers to an XML document(SOAPRequest.xml), which is used as the SOAP message. This document should be included in the same project folder as the Java application invoking the service.

After reviewing the "US Zip Validator" WSDL document, it is clear that we would like to invoke the "getTemp" method. This information is contained within the SOAP body and includes the appropriate parameters.

SOAPRequest.xml

Following a successful interaction, the Web Service provider will provide a response that is similar in format to the user request. When developing in NetBeans, run this project and examine the subsequent SOAP message response in the Tomcat output window.

Web Services with Netbeans
The Netbeans version used for this explanation is 5.0.

After Netbeans is open, click on the "Runtime" tab on the left pane, then right-click "Web Services" and select "Add Web Service." In the "URL" field, enter the address of the web service WSDL file, in our example above it is "http://www.weather.gov/forecasts/xml/DWMLgen/wsdl/ndfdXML.wsdl" and click Get Web Service Description. This will bring up the information of the web service.

References and Links

Weather.gov

WebServices.org

W3C's Web Services Reference

UDDI.org

XMethods.net

Java API for XML Registries

Apache SOAP Toolkit

JavaMail Framework

Java Activation Framework

Xerces Java Parser

Jasnowski, Mike. Java, XML, and Web Services Bible

Microsoft Web Services

http://www.xml.com/

http://www.w3schools.com/soap/soap_intro.asp

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/XML_-_Managing_Data_Exchange/Web_services

http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/REC-soap12-part0-20070427/

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1589730,00.asp

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-soapcl/


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Talk:Physics Study Guide/Linear motion

Have vectors been introduced already when this page is presented? If not, then the implied use of vector notation (bold variables) will make little sense to the students.

I always preferred to start from F=ma since it allows introduction of "real-world" situations. Even without calculus you can introduce pushing a cart, throwing a ball, etc. As written, I fear that the only problem that can be intruduced is droping a ball in one dimension. The next situation (multiple objects, spacecraft, etc) follows more naturally from the force based discussion. I also like to introduce Newton at his point to illustrate that science is a series of "standing on the shoulders of giants" actions.

Evelien: Interestingly enough, I have started a textbook on Physics in Dutch recently, and Newton and Galilei are exactly my starting points. I think I will be watching this English language parallel of my own effort closely in the future. My intended audience is somewhat younger though: >12 or (bright) >10 year olds will be my audience...

1 Displacement, velocity, and acceleration, also known as linear motion or kinematics

The title should NOT merely duplicate the names of subheaders.

--146.244.186.42 04:31, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

small comments
1) I guess x(e) should be x(t)

2) you might mention that whenever you use v at a time t or a at a time t you are using the instantaneous forms. 207.67.146.242 21:40, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

3) The graphic showing the Cartesian Coordinates, shows a mistake: the "y" axis actually corresponds to the "z" axis and the shown "z" axis it is actually the "y" axis. Please re-edit the graphic and show the right one, because it is misleading -Sherpa2007

Confusion between Displacement and Direction
Under the section of "Displacement," I found this confusing sentence.

Calculate the distance you traveled along each of these segments, and then add all your results together.

Shouldn't that bold-faced distance actually be displacement, as noted later in paragraph? Please correct me if I am wrong, but it seemed to me that displacement would be the most logical answer.

Further note: the whole sentences about distance and displacement are ill-posed since they fail to note that distance is a scalar whereas displacement is a vector.

Additionally, should it be noticed that displacements are independent of coordinate systems, whereas positions are not?

section: "Constant acceleration" / first Box
The first box in the section "Constant acceleration" currently displays the special case of zero acceleration (dv/dt=0 m s^-2). It should be changed to display the general case of constant acceleration. To do so one could simply switch the "v" with an "a" and adjust the units, or else keep the "v" and exchange the zero with "const." (as this would fit the description given right above the box more closely).

Is anybody interested in this student essay?
I have my students write projects on Wikiversity and Miraheze, and most are of mediocre quality. But this one needs to be published somewhere on a Wikimedia Foundaton wiki:
 * https://wright100.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page

If you are interested, tell me where to put it and how you would like it formatted.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 15:14, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

title: Talk:Physics Study Guide/Linear motion


text:
User:Elrond 52

Retired nuclear physicist, mathematician, and biomedical statistician. Serious programmer (Fortran,C, C++, Pascal, SAS, etc). Lately participating in open source projects.

Remember long ago teaching undergrad physics, wishing for a better text than Halliday and Resnick. Never found one.

The best statistics text I ever found was the manual to the BMDP software. If it's not in there you probably shouldn't be doing it.

title: User:Elrond 52


text:
User:Perl~enwikibooks/manhattan

<< | >>

title: User:Perl~enwikibooks/manhattan


text:
OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org User's Manual: OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org is a free, open source alternative to Microsoft Office and WordPerfect. It provides almost all of the functionality at no cost to the end user. You can read more about the creators and the project's goals here.

This manual also works for early versions of LibreOffice.

Introduction

 * /Introduction/
 * /Installation/
 * Applications Overview

Applications
OpenOffice.org is as an office suite, is divided into several related sub-applications. These applications are designed to work together but can also work like a stand alone programs:
 * /Writer/: word processor
 * /Calc/: spreadsheet
 * /Impress/: presentation program
 * /Draw/: vector graphics editor
 * /Base/: database management program
 * /Math/: formula editor

General Features

 * /Macro/: OpenOffice.org can be scripted through OpenOffice.org Basic, Python, Beanshell, and Javascript, this feature is more widely known as using Macros.
 * /Find & Replace/: OpenOffice.org's Find and Replace Function, from simple search and replace to the use of Regular Expressions.

Technical

 * /OASIS File Format/

Miscellaneous topics

 * /Performance Tips/
 * /Quickstarter/
 * /Prelink/
 * /Some useful template/
 * /Giving and Contributing/

Derived Works (Forks)
An up-to-date list is kept at http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/DerivedWorks.

References and external links

 * OpenOffice.org User Guide (2.0 Draft 11). Note that this is a 470 page PDF file and may take a few moments to download/open depending on your connection speed.
 * OpenOffice.org data recovery Hopefully it never happens, but if it does use these steps to recover data from corrupted or problem files in OpenOffice.org.
 * OpenOffice.org 2.0 lessons in Flash format
 * How to install OpenOffice.org in Windows XP
 * Using C++ with OOo's SDK

Contributors

 * T.R. Darr - Responsible for the bulk of the content (at the time of this writing; feel free to change that).
 * Roger Que - Information on OpenOffice.org being pre-installed with Linux distributions
 * Klingoncowboy4 - Added version, writer, and additional windows download info. Started Writer Tutorial.
 * Gesiwuj - Added descriptions and images of each application.
 * User: BLibrestez55 - Added description http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/User:Blibrestez55/Books/BLibrestez_Certification_Writer]

OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org אופן אופיס ღია ოფისი (Open Office) OpenOffice.org a gyakorlatban nl:Portaal:OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org Vapautta tietoyhteiskuntaan!/OpenOffice.org โอเพนออฟฟิศดอตอ็อก OpenOffice.org

title: OpenOffice.org


text:
Wikibooks:Miscellaneous bookshelf

This bookshelf covers books that do not belong on any particular bookshelf.

Food and drink

 * Bartending
 * Cookbook [[Image:50%.svg]]

Hobby

 * How to Tune a Drum Set
 * Bicycles
 * Guide to Success & Fulfillment
 * Marine Aquaria
 * The Unicyclopedia
 * Working Rocrail with Hornby Elite DCC Controller

Self Help
This is a collection of all the pages that you can use to get your life together. The following links are to books that are "generic" versions of important subjects and / or emulations of current self-help bestsellers.

 * How to quit smoking
 * Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Know yourself and others
 * Intelligence Intensification Get smarter
 * Living With a Narcissist
 * Personal Finance & Investing Get your money in order
 * Philosophy and Religion important areas for many people but currently outside the parameters of this bookshelf
 * Qrai is an original system of self improvement

Social work

 * Towards a better India
 * Strengths-Based Social Work Practice

Travel guides

 * Hiking in the Canadian Rockies -
 * Isle of Arran -
 * London -
 * South East Queensland -
 * Texas State Travel Guide -
 * Vietnam -

Miscellaneous
''Please remember that Wikibooks is not a place for any kind of books. See What is Wikibooks.''

A - F

 * Accents
 * Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book
 * Alchemy
 * AvernumScript
 * Business Continuity Management
 * Chinese Tractor Maintenance
 * Cleaning Guide
 * Color Theory
 * Conworlding [[Image:25%.svg]]
 * Drugs:Fact and Fiction
 * FBI name check
 * Field Guide

G - M

 * Genealogy [[Image:25%.svg]]
 * Guide to electrical equipment for travellers
 * Guide to Internet Culture
 * Guide to Social Activity
 * Hemp products
 * Home Remedies
 * Immigrating to Canada
 * Improving our communication
 * International Baccalaureate [[Image:25%.svg]]
 * Keeping a Journal
 * Lists on the TI-83 Calculator
 * Laboratory Safety
 * Lucid dreaming [[File:100%.svg]]
 * Magic
 * Meeting Basics
 * Message-Passing Interface [[Image:50%.svg]]

N - S

 * Outdoor Survival
 * Parenting
 * Playful Organizing
 * Project Management [[Image:25%.svg]]
 * Qrai [[Image:25%.svg]]
 * RC Airplane
 * Sandisk Sansa MP3 players
 * Scouting [[Image:25%.svg]]
 * Self-Reliance Handbook
 * Shaving
 * Star Trek Starships

T - Z

 * Teaching Computer Literacy - From the Beginning [[Image:25%.svg]]
 * Tomos Moped [[Image:25%.svg]]
 * Tools for Healthy Living
 * United Nations
 * Warfare
 * What You Should Know About Medicines
 * WikiSci
 * World Stamp Catalogue
 * Van Dwelling [[Image:25%.svg]]
 * The Art of Cities
 * Technologies for Rural Development

cy:Silff lyfrau:Amrywiol Ripiano Varie he:מדף:שונות

title: Wikibooks:Miscellaneous bookshelf


text: Template:Stages

title: Template:Stages


text:
OpenOffice.org/Performance Tips

If you want to OpenOffice.org startup even faster, try these speed boosting tricks.

 * Upgrade to the latest stable version.
 * Upgrade your RAM, OpenOffice.org alone needs at least 256 Mb, but it will be a lot happier with more. Refer to recommended (not minimum) RAM requirements of your operating system and desktop environment.
 * Use native file formats, converting to other formats takes time.

General settings

 * Visual
 * In Tools > Options > View:
 * Switch off showing icons in menus
 * Disable showing previews of fonts
 * Disable anti-aliasing (where the option exists), if you don't require this or if your desktop environment does the anti-aliasing job itself;
 * Consider using the Classic icon style or one that matches your desktop environment (the latter may be pre-set if you use a distribution geared towards a specific desktop environment).

 * Languages, spelling and grammar
 * Disable spelling and grammar extensions for languages you don't use (disabling some may require superuser rights);
 * Disable automatic spelling and grammar checking inTools > Options > Language Settings > Writing Aids > Options subsection —
 * Uncheck the following options:
 * "Check spelling as you type";
 * "Check grammar as you type".

System-specific information

 * Windows
 * Use the quickstarter for faster application start-up. Note that Using the QuickStarter may increase the time for system initialisation.

 * Linux
 * Have you run prelink?[Prelink]
 * If you are using Linux, use your distribution's packages, they are typically more optimized than the plain ones.

 * If you try renaming a folder containing a new OO document, you may get an error message saying the folder can't be renamed because it's being used--even if you've closed the document. Here's a workaround: Just move the document out of that folder, rename the folder and move the document back in.

Version 2.0
In 2006, there were some benchmarks which showed that OOo-2.0 still used a lot of memory and was slower than MS-Office, but OOo developers promised that they were working on improvements.

This version branch requires at least 128 Mb of RAM to run properly.Running OO.o 2.x off a LiveCD (such as Knoppix) without swap space requires 2–4 times as much, depending on whither window manager (such as IceWM) or desktop enviornment (like KDE/GNOME) you use.
 * System requirements

By default, OpenOffice.org 2.x and earlier include a number of writing aids (dictionaries and thesauri). By version 2.4, the amount of these is extensive, with writing aids for approximately 25 languages and language variants, and all are loaded into memory when starting OO.o.
 * Disabling writing aids

For everyday use, most languages' and some of their variants' dictionaries can be turned off throughTools > Options > Language settings > Writing Aids —
 * Click the [Edit...] button next to "Available language modules" section;
 * In "Edit Modules" window, choose all unnecessary languages from the drop-down menu and then uncheck their respective spelling, grammar, hyphenation, and thesaurus modules in the list below. When done, click the Close button to exit the window and then click OK to exit the Options window. Restart OO.o.

Version 1.x
In early versions of OpenOffice.org, before 1.1, it was cursed with a severe speed problem, taking a long time to load, often over a minute. As of May 2004, that issue seems to have been resolved with OO.o 1.1.

This version branch needs at least 64 Mb of RAM to run properly.
 * Requirements

Compiling
If you are compiling OpenOffice.org, make sure you are using the right cflags. A well tuned selection can have a 20% increase. Using the latest version of GCC can also make a big difference.

title: OpenOffice.org/Performance Tips


text:
OpenGL Programming

Welcome to the OpenGL Programming book. OpenGL is an API used for drawing 3D graphics. OpenGL is not a programming language; an OpenGL application is typically written in C or C++. What OpenGL does allow you to do is draw attractive, realistic 3D graphics with minimal effort. The API is typically used to interact with a GPU, to achieve hardware-accelerated rendering.

You are free, and encouraged, to share and contribute to this wikibook: it is written in the spirit of free documentation, that belongs to humanity. Feel free to make copies, teach it in school or professional classes, improve the text, write comments or even new sections.

We're looking for contributors. If you know about OpenGL, feel free to leave comments, expand TODO sections and write new ones!

Introduction

 * 1) About this book
 * 2) History and Evolution of OpenGL

Setting Up OpenGL

 * Installation on GNU/Linux
 * Installation on Macintosh
 * Installation on Windows with Code::Blocks
 * Installation for Android NDK development
 * with a GLUT-like wrapper to follow the exercises
 * Installation for iPhone development
 * Installing GLUT

Modern OpenGL
"Modern" OpenGL is about OpenGL 2.1+, OpenGL ES 2.0+ and WebGL, with a programmable pipeline and shaders.

The basics arc
Tutorial_drafts: ideas and notes for upcoming tutorials

The lighting arc
This series of tutorials is a C++ port of the GLSL wikibook Basic Lighting tutorials.

This series of tutorials is a C++ port of the GLSL wikibook Basic Texturing tutorials.

This series of tutorials is a C++ port of the GLSL wikibook tutorials about Textures in 3D.

There are more tutorials to port at the GLSL wikibook!

The scientific arc
And more to come.

Mini-portal
This series shows how to implement a teleportation system similar to Valve's Portal, step-by-step, using OpenGL.

Glescraft
This series shows how to render a voxel based world, similar to Minecraft.

Using the accumulation buffer
Note: not all videocards support accumulation buffer

Cutting-edge OpenGL
If you do not target old mobile devices or the web, you can upgrade to OpenGL (ES) 3.x / 4.x. It notably introduces new kinds of shaders: Geometry, Tessellation Control and Tessellation Evaluation, and Compute.

and lots of other features.

Appendices

 * OpenGL ES 2.0 Overview: OpenGL ES 2.0 (OpenGL for Embedded Systems 2.0) concepts and its differences to normal OpenGL
 * Migrating from 1.x to 2.x: how to upgrade your code to use modern OpenGL
 * Glossary: what do all those new weird words mean?
 * APIs, Libraries and acronyms: how all acronyms relate to each others
 * OpenGL Shading Language: elements of GLSL programming
 * Shaders reference: input and output variables list
 * Team: contributors to this wikibook
 * Download code: wikibooks-opengl code repository

Legacy OpenGL 1.x
"Legacy" OpenGL is about OpenGL 1.x and OpenGL ES 1.x, with a fixed pipeline and no shaders.

Starting Tutorial

 * 1) Setting Up A Programming Environment On Windows[[File:75%.svg]]
 * 2) Setting Up OpenGL In The Programming Environment[[File:75%.svg]]
 * 3) Drawing Primitives[[File:75%.svg]]
 * 4) Immediate Mode
 * 5) Display Lists
 * 6) Vertex Arrays
 * 7) Basic Transformations[[File:75%.svg]]
 * 8) Translation
 * 9) Rotation
 * 10) Scaling
 * 11) Custom Transformations

Basics

 * 1) Structure of a Typical OpenGL Application [[File:100%.svg]]
 * 2) Drawing Rectangles [[File:75%.svg]]
 * 3) Drawing Lines and Points
 * 4) Drawing Simple 2D Shapes [[File:100%.svg]]
 * 5) OpenGL Naming Conventions [[File:75%.svg]]
 * 6) Using Color [[File:75%.svg]]
 * 7) Viewing Transformations [[File:25%.svg]]
 * 8) Drawing Simple 3D Objects
 * 9) Perspective versus Orthographic Projections

Intermediate

 * 1) Smoothing Polygons with Normals
 * 2) Adding Lights
 * 3) Using Materials
 * 4) Using Textures
 * 5) Using Mipmaps
 * 6) Drawing Complex Polygons Using Tessellation

Advanced

 * 1) Optimizing OpenGL Code
 * 2) Drawing Shadows
 * 3) Drawing Using Quadrics
 * 4) Drawing Using NURBS and Curves
 * 5) Ambient Occlusion

Appendices

 * 1) Coordinate Transformations
 * 2) Understanding Transformation Matrices
 * 3) OpenGL Library Reference. functions and type reference for gl.h glu.h and glut.h
 * 4) Why OpenGL Exists and What It's Good For
 * 5) Migrating from 1.x to 2.x: how to upgrade your code to use modern OpenGL

Wikibooks
Related WikiBooks:
 * GLSL Programming : wikibook on the use of the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) in Unity 3 and Blender 2.5, with much information on lighting and texturing
 * Blender 3D: Noob to Pro: comprehensive book on using the Blender 3D modeling environment
 * an open source, cross-platform IDE's for exploring pixel based graphics on the GPU using GLSL :
 * Fragmentarium
 * Shadertoy

Ports
The following websites provide conversion of the tutorials to other programming languages or platforms:
 * Official code repository contains the main SDL2 version, but also GLUT and WebGL ports
 * port to Lightweight Java Game Library (LWJGL) (blog)
 * not really a port, but commented, progressive version of the tutorials code as the author follows them

Freely-licensed documentation and samples

 * OpenGL ES 2.0 Reference Pages: official reference man pages, SGI Free Software B License
 * Learning Modern 3D Graphics Programming: another modern OpenGL tutorial, requiring v3.3 or later, MIT license (source repository)
 * Learn OpenGL ES: Detailed, step-by-step OpenGL ES tutorials in Java for Android, and a bit of WebGL as well, CC BY-SA 3.0 license (source repository − Apache License 2)
 * OpenGL Samples Pack: written in C++ based on the "core profile" specifications, aimed at easing upgrades to new OpenGL versions and features, MIT license (http://ogl-samples.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=ogl-samples/ogl-samples;a=tree)
 * http://www.mechcore.net/wiki/index.php?title=OpenGL_Examples: GFDL license
 * https://www.khronos.org/opengl/wiki/FAQ: GFDL license
 * OpenGLContext Python Tutorials: basic tutorials using PyOpenGL (BSD-style licenses)
 * Paul's projects: OpenGL 1.x, two tutorials on shadow mapping and bump mapping, with code under the MIT license
 * WebGL:
 * Gregg Tavares’ WebGL articles: detailed 2D and 3D basics with emphasing on matrix operations; lots of diagrams and interactive animations (source code − MIT license)
 * WebGL at Mozilla Developer Network: WebGL overview, including embedding videos; CC BY-SA for articles, MIT and public domain for source code
 * three.js: collection of demos using the three.js WebGL framework; source code is MIT but models/data may be non-free

Non-freely-licensed documentation

 * http://nehe.gamedev.net/lesson.asp?index=01: OpenGL 1.x
 * Collection of OpenGL fundamentals tutorials using C++ and Windows API: OpenGL 1.x
 * ZeusCMD OpenGL Tutorials: OpenGL 1.x
 * OpenGL Programming Examples: OpenGL 1.x,

Websites

 * OpenGL Lighting Model Tutorial with Examples
 * Official OpenGL Website
 * Mesa, an open-sourced 3D graphics library almost identical to OpenGL

title: OpenGL Programming


text:
Using GNOME/Applications

GNOME comes with a variety of applications to allow you to work.

List of Applications

 * Calculator
 * Dictionary
 * Character map
 * Games
 * Graphics
 * Image viewer
 * PDF Viewer
 * Terminal
 * Text editor
 * Web browser

title: Using GNOME/Applications


text:
Using GNOME/Preferences

GNOME is designed with good defaults in mind. However, it also allows configurability. Hence GNOME allows you to change your preferences. Here is a guide to the available preferences.

 * Desktop Background
 * File Management
 * Font Preferences
 * Keyboard
 * Keyboard shortcuts
 * Menus and toolbars
 * Mouse
 * Network Proxy
 * Screen Resolution
 * Sound
 * Theme
 * Windows

Accessibility

 * Assistive technology support

Advanced

 * CD Database
 * File Types and programs
 * Login Photo
 * Panel
 * Preferred Applications
 * Screensaver
 * Sessions

title: Using GNOME/Preferences


text:
Guitar/Tuning the Guitar

Advances in manufacturing have solved many of the tuning problems associated with the budget guitars of yesteryear. Entry level guitars are available from major manufacturers such as Yamaha and Fender which are entirely suitable for beginners. All guitar stores sell tuning forks and electronic tuners. A tuning fork provides a single reference note for tuning and for this reason an electronic tuner will be more useful to the complete beginner.

When new strings have been put on a guitar they often fall out of tune very easily. New strings will stretch until they reach a point where their elasticity diminishes and then they will remain at the correct tension and frequency. Strings need to be broken in. It will take time to work all the slack out of the strings but the process can be sped up. Put on new strings and tune to just below concert pitch using an electronic guitar tuner. Then pull each string an inch away from the fretboard and this will instantly put them out of tune. Use your electronic guitar tuner to retune the strings to just below concert pitch and repeat the process. After a while the slack should be gone from the strings and the guitar can be tuned to concert pitch and should stay in tune.

Tuning the Guitar
Sound is created by the disturbance of particles in the air. The vibrations of a struck string causes the air particles to moves in waves which the ear receives and the brain interprets. When a string is attached to two points, as the strings on a guitar are, then striking it causes a sound to be produced at a regular frequency. The length, thickness and tension of the string determines the pitch of the note it produces. If you have a string of a certain length and tension stretched across a wooden board which produced a known frequency and you wished to double the frequency to produce the note an octave above - you simply halve the distance that it is stretched across and keep the same tension. That is exactly what happens on a guitar when you fret any of the open strings at the twelfth fret.

There are many different tunings for the open strings of the guitar but the most common is known as standard tuning or E tuning. In standard tuning the open strings should be tuned to the notes E A D G B e.

The diagram below illustrates the open strings and the twelfth fret. Note that the upper case E represents the thickest string and the lower case e represents the thinnest string. The diagram is orientated towards the player's view.

e|---| B|---| G|---| D|---| A|---| E|---|

Four-Five Tuning
Four-Five tuning uses the open A string as the first reference note. A tuning aid is useful to ensure that the open A string is at concert pitch.

Concert pitch is an Internationally agreed standard that assigns A = 440 Hz. The guitar is a transposing instrument and is notated an octave higher than its actual pitch to avoid having to use the bass clef in standard notation. The notated middle C is played on the third fret of the A string though the pitched middle C is to be found on the first fret of the B string. A = 440 Hz is the fifth fret of the high e string but for convenience the open A string (110 Hz) is used as the reference note.

The diagram below shows the notes to be fretted.

e|---0---| B|---0---5---| G|---0---4---| D|---0---5---| A|---0---5---| E|---5---|

Follow these six steps to tune your guitar using the Four-Five method:

Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5 Step 6

It is recommended that strings be brought up to their correct pitch when tuning. The Four-Five method has the disadvantage of progressively increasing tuning inaccuracies by the use of multiple reference notes.

Harmonic Tuning
This method of tuning uses harmonics. By lightly touching a string directly above its fret-wire the fundamental of a note is silenced leaving only a series of overtones. Any note played on any instrument consists of a fundamental and a harmonic series of overtones. The twelfth, seventh and fifth nodes are the easiest frets with which to sound harmonics. After striking the string the finger should be removed quickly to produce the harmonic.

The fretboard diagram below shows the pairs of harmonics that are used. You start by tuning the harmonic on the 7th fret of the A string to the harmonic on the low E string. Then the harmonic on the 7th fret of the D string is tuned with the harmonic on the 5th fret of the A string. Tuning the G string to the D string is done in the same manner. Tune the harmonic on the B string to the harmonic on the 4th fret of the G string. Tune the harmonic on the e string to the harmonic on the B string.

e|-7*| B|5*-| G|--4*-7*| * = Play a harmonic at this fret D|5*---7*| A|5*---7*| E|5*-|

Tuning with harmonics can progressively increase tuning errors due to the use of multiple reference notes. The fundamental is the most dominant frequency of the harmonic series and it is recommended that a further tuning check be made using fretted notes.

Tempered Tuning
This method is recommended because it applies equal temperament with the use of a single reference note. This method uses the open high e string as the reference note. You tune the unison and octave E notes that are found on the other strings to the open high e string. Hold the fretted note down as you turn the tuning peg and you will feel the string move under your fingertip. This involves striking the strings with your right hand and then using the right hand to turn the tuning pegs. If may feel awkward at first but with practice it becomes familiar. The open low E string is the only string to be tuned to the high e string without fretting. The fretted note on the 5th fret of the B string should be tuned wide by the amount of two beats per second in relation to the high e string.

de:Gitarre: Stimmen Apprendre la guitare/Accorder sa guitare Chitarra/Accordatura Gitaar/Gitaarstemming

title: Guitar/Tuning the Guitar