User talk:Yim Kai-mun

We are so pleased to have you join us. Your interests are particularly needed by our community now, as we'd appreciate having more writing on all the topics that you mention. Nancy Sculerati MD 08:59, 30 January 2007 (CST)

Romanization

Just out of curiousity: What romanization system for Chinese do you intend on using on Citizendium? I've been mixing them fairly loosely, trying to use the romanization for each term that I think is in use the most in English (Pinyin for some, Wade-Giles for others, etc.), but it'd be nice if all the pages on Chinese topics were consistant in this. Shanya Almafeta 09:09, 30 January 2007 (CST)

Re: Romanisation

First off, I'd be using UK spelling as that is what is used over here in Singapore. I am a purist where romanisation is concerned - it's either you use all Pinyin or all Wade-Giles. That is for Mandarin; Cantonese however is a different matter. As a native Cantonese I absolutely refuse to accept the accepted systems of romanisations such as Yale or Jyutping. Instead I romanise by ear and I think I do a fairly decent job as I am also an amateur translator. I think for Mandarin, we should set the standard of romanisation as Pinyin unless the Wade-Giles is still very much in use i.e. Chungking Express. Chungking would be Chongqing in Pinyin. For Cantonese...lol, I'm not sure CZ is ready for the Yim KM system yet!! Yim Kai-mun 23.16, 30 January 2007 (SGT)

Hi, welcome to Citizendium. I'm interested in issues related to romanisation (although Cantonese isn't something I particularly know about), so I'll be interested to see how you spell things. By the way, I'm curious as to what you object to about Jyutping and Yale Cantonese.—Nat Krause 15:41, 30 January 2007 (CST)

Well, regarding Cantonese romanisation, I'm not sure that a specific system, such Jyupting or Yale, necessarily mandates an underlying opinion about how the words are pronounced. What I mean is, I'm not sure that "lei" is any less valid as a Yale or Jyutping spelling of 你 than "nei" is. However, perhaps the people who are promoting these systems have a different opinion about that than I do. In any event, since I don't know much about Cantonese, I think I'll just stand back and watch how you spell things.

As for Lojban, it's a constructed spoken language (see http://www.lojban.org) which was designed with the ostensible goal of a grammar that is more flexible and precise than any native language's. If the language that you use influences the way you think, this might, in theory, result in you thinking more clearly or looking at things in a different way. Lojban is pretty interesting, but I'm not really studying it actively right now (it's not all that easy to learn).—Nat Krause 23:56, 1 February 2007 (CST)

Stem cell research

I have a million views on stem cells, and a million views on research, and you could multiply them out to get my views on stem cell research. If that's an interest of yours, why not start an article - and we'll all pitch in! Of course, that article will have to sympathetically include all significant views, but you personally, don't have to write them all. Best thing I think, with a subject that has a history of controversy (of course, most subjects do) is to also put a tentative plan for the article on the discussion page, and to be willing to discuss the text there. Regards, Nancy Nancy Sculerati MD 09:35, 30 January 2007 (CST)

reply from my page (copied)

This is a question for the Discussion forums. Look to the sidebar on the left. I'm sorry that you will have to go through the trouble of registering there. Meanwhile, I will bring up your question-please register, go to the Discussions and look for answers. This is the sort of thing we are still working out. Best, NancyNancy Sculerati MD 09:41, 30 January 2007 (CST)

China workgroup

Do you think we could create a China workgroup, similar to other workgroups here? Of course, we'd need approval, but it's obvious that you and I (and hopefully many others soon!) will be working in the same sphere of topics, so maybe we should create a workgroup to organize our works. Shanya Almafeta 11:33, 31 January 2007 (CST)

For your reference, I've added a Chinese disambiguation page from WP. John Stephenson 02:41, 14 February 2007 (CST)

Replies

Hi Yim Kai-mun! Welcome to CZ. It looks like you're settling in :) I'll be 30 this year, so you probably think me terribly old. Hopefully there will be a good community of younger users keeping things interesting and up to date. Sarah Tuttle 16:41, 31 January 2007 (CST)

Tables in mediawiki

Hi Yim, the question Nancy posted to the forums on your behalf has been languishing there for a while, so I thought I'd have a look at the technical side of the issue, for your information as well as my own education :).

I quote:

Here is what I found, Nancy. The xls and xml files cannot be used by the wiki as they are, but the html can, though it is described as "not recommended". The page http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Table says a table can be xhtml, html or wikitable formatted. According to that, and the various other places I looked, the xhtml and wikitable formats are preferred, it seems, for readable displays on handheld browsers (I don't know if wikitables do display properly on these, I would go straight to xhtml).

Fortunately, there is an automated converter html-to-wikitable available at http://www.uni-bonn.de/~manfear/html2wiki-tables.php. Even better, one can use an html-to-xhtml converter such as the free one available at http://www.tsnetsoft.com/software.htm. Alternatively one can use the paste and copy converter found at the eggheadcafe.com site - http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/html2xhtml/default.aspx.

An important point is that the html or xhtml file as such would not be "uploaded", but rather the xhtml/html/wiki code would be pasted into an editing box. This is because the system (server side) allows only 'png', 'gif', 'jpg', 'jpeg', and 'ogg' files to be uploaded, unless the technical people change the LocalSettings.php on the Citizendium server. So it seems as if conversion to xhtml is likely the most useful, and the code then pasted to an editing box, with conversion to wikitable working as well for Citizendium itself.

Note I'm posting this to Yim's talk page too, if she misses this.

Kind regards, --Christo Muller 14:36, 13 February 2007 (CST)

Hi J, I've finally gotten round to starting to format that table you sent. The problem is really Excel trying to "over-control" the html output, while wiki likes it somewhat looser, so that the css can control the look and layout. It would mean removing much of the MS-Office stuff, but that should not be a problem. Maintaining the mixed Roman and Chinese fonts in proper proportion would be critical. I'll e-mail the file to you when I'm through with the work. --Christo Muller (Talk) 14:05, 21 February 2007 (CST)

Singapore English

Do take a look at Singapore English if you get a moment. I changed this article's title from 'Singlish' as I didn't think this term was academically acceptable; plus the article can now cover all varieties of English as spoken in Singapore. Also I've moved it away from claiming SE is a creole as there doesn't seem to be evidence to support this. John Stephenson 01:59, 14 February 2007 (CST)