Last modified: 2014-03-11 11:26:04 UTC
Presently, one has to click on every meaning of an expression to see its annotation. Moreover it's not possible to add an annotation at the same time one adds a new translation: one has to validate first, then to click twice and wait to enter an annotation, then to validate again, to click twice and wait to enter a second annotation about the same word, etc.. It's boring, long and often not done. Some annotations are crucial. It should be much easier to read and write annotations. To simplify, I suggest this: 1) pages of expressions would not contain translations in plain, but would contain all the annotations, in plain (not in a sub-window to open by clicking). 2) pages of definedMeanings (DM) would contain the translations but not the annotations in plain. DM pages and expression pages would be of different background color. When searching a term, the reader would first see the expression page. If he wants the translations, he will choose the meaning he is interested in, click, and get to the DM page. 3) The writer of a translation would be led from the DM page to a page reminding him the English word and definition if any, the original one if not translated in English, and he would be invited to enter all the annotations at once, in one page. 4) The writer of a new DM would do the same from a 0 result search page of from an expression page, except that he would of course not be reminded the English word and DM. He would be invited to define his new DM in English if possible.
In Edit mode, that the green "+" sign now allows to add several annotations without saving them one by one improves much the situation, but we still have to save an expression before being allowed to annotate it, which is unfriendly. In reading mode, the most important annotations (word class, gender, inflection information), which appear JUST AFTER THE LEXICAL ITEM itself (because they are very important) in a paper dictionary, are still hidden or absent in Omegawiki, which is a pity.
[No news for three years => resetting ASSIGNED status]
A second improvement took place: one can edit the annotations without going to the edit page. Nevertheless, I still think that, as in a paper dictionary or in Wiktionary, in the expression page, the main annotations (at least the word class, gender and grammatical property such as "transitive") should better appear without the reader having to click anything. The expression pages and the DM pages are very similar, and don't need to be so. The former is about an expression, so is language-dependent, and should provide directly (without clicking anything else) for the linguistic information most one-language dictionaries give. The DM pages are about a meaning and its expression so should, to my mind, be more oriented towards semantics (what exactly are we speaking about, to be distinguished from slightly different meanings) and towards translations.
(In reply to Fiable.biz from comment #3) I fully agree with your idea, how things should appear for editors. If I had the time and/or if we had the coders, I would make a mockup, start a discussion about the details and then implement it. Let us find people who mould this UI javascript stuff into something better :-)
