Write, edit or translate text

To use the Edit text procedure, you must first go through the following steps:
First, change "Language of work" to the language in which you will be writing if it is not the one shown.
Second, select the course you want in the "Course" pull-down menu. This will open the text section of the first chapter of the course selected.
Third, choose the chapter (or About authors).
Fourth, select the section from the existing sections in the chapter, which may be any of the following:

A breakdown of sections appears in the "Work status schedule". To see the complete breakdown of all sections in all chapters, it is best to use the "List chapters" procedure, which also allows to change the course files structure, and creates the Contents files.

Layout of the "Edit HTML text" screen

The screen is divided in several parts:
- the upper the yellow shaded part identifies the material selected and allows to move to another selection; to see what resources can be used in questions, checkmarks are provide for List audio, case, images, tables, pdf or othe documents;
- right below it, is the TEXTAREA where the raw HTML page of the material selected is shown, and that is where all the writing, editing or translating work is to be performed; when the procedure is used for translation, there may be a shaded box wiht the original text to the right of the TEXTAREA; just below the TEXTAREA several buttons are presented to perform different steps (save, retrieve a different temporary file or notify work completed);
- a "Preview box" below the yellow shaded area presents the same material as in the TEXTAREA, but in the way that it appears to students in their browsers, except that some images may be missing, links do not function, and scripts are suppressed;
- a "Work status" schedule shows the ID numbers of those who worked on the different sections of the course; a color scheme used in the schedule (see below) indicates the current state of all sections in the course; - at the very bottom of the screen, these explanations are offered;
- in between these parts, various small messages may appear to indicate the actual name of the file retrieved or the name of the person who last worked on the material selected.

Colour code in "Work status schedule"

In the Work status schedule, the background of a section is

- white if there is no page of that type of section in this courses;
- light grey or light yellow if the page exists, but no task has been set up for this page;
- light green if a task exists for this page, but no volunteer has chosen this page as a task;
- pink if the volunteer has chosen this page as a task, but has not yet worked on it;
- dark grey if the volunteer has added or corrected material in the page;
- dark blue if the volunteer has clicked on the button to "Notify works completed";
- purple if the page has been edited after completion and transfer to permanent folder;
- black if all work on this page is completed and the page has been moved to the permanent folder;
(note that records may not be up-to-date for all the work done, especially for materials inserted prior to the installation of the task monitoring system);

The ID number of the volunteer is shown in a yellow button if he/she is registered as faculty, orange button if he/she is registered as staff, and purple button if it a board member;

Selection of task

If a task exists for the currently opened section page, this is indicated in a line just above the yellow shaded box at the top of the screen. If the task has not been selected, a button will appear, that allows to select that task. For then on, the button will no longer appear, and the colour in the "Work schedule" will be pink rather than light green. The deadline is initially set to two weeks from the date selected. The deadline can be changed in "My tasts selection" or "My work".

Recommendations for inserting text into TEXTAREA

As previously indicated, all the work to be performed is in the TEXTAREA. It is advisable not to erase, change or damage the HTML tags, unless you are already accustomed to writing HTML pages. It is possible to copy and paste any portion of the material in the TEXTAREA. But the material pasted must be in text format with line breaks. Pasting material copied directly from a word processor is likely to result in a corrupted file and an error message. In most word processors a choice is given for the format in which the file is to be saved, and you must choose a plain text format with line breaks.

When text is processed in Microsoft Word, it is recommended to take one extra step. First, save the file as "Text only with line breaks" in Word. (In Word 2003 select "Text", then click on "Insert line breaks" .) Then, open that file in Wordpad, Notepad or any other text editor that does not insert its own formatting. Check that the file has the line breaks, and, if the text contains HTML tags, that these HTML tags are not broken (i.e. split across two lines) before copying and pasting it into the TEXTAREA.

It is advisable to paste only one short paragraph at a time in between the <P> and </P> tags, and save each time.
Naturally, if you know how to use an HTML editor, you can configure the layout of the material as you see fit. But, keep in mind that some HTML editors insert sometimes overhead that can be substantial, even several times the size of the actual text present there. This overhead must be removed. If you are using a Microsoft editor, please download a free utility from Microsoft called HTML filter 2.0. This filter is extremely simple to use, and saves a lot of space and time.

Recommendations for editing a previously written page

When the text of a course chapter is modified, there may be a number of test questions, assignments and translated text that need to be changed as well. To carry over changes to all affected pages, PEOI must use special anchors on which PEOI's procedures will rely to carry over all necesary corrections. Note that the following methods of editing chapter text apply only to completed courses (i.e. NOT courses under construction), and only to chapter text (i.e. NOT to assignment, review questions or other sections).

There are six types of editing changes:
- small corrections in spelling, grammar or punctuation that affect only one language:
     these can be inserted directly into a sentence;

- changes that affect the meaning of a sentence in one language but do not change the overall thrust of the concept:
    these require a anchor of the type
    <A NAME="anchored your name - 2007-05-15"></A>
    to be placed in front of the paragraph (note: not inside the paragraph);

- deprecating a paragraph:
    when the concept of a paragraph is not incorrect, but no longer reflects generally accepted practice or knowledge, it may be retained as illustration
    of past history, then the paragraph needs to be placed in a special example box by preceding the paragraph with the tag
    <A NAME="anchordpbign1 your name - 2007-05-15"></A>,
    and trailing the paragraph with
    <A NAME="anchordpendn1 "></A>;

- deleting a paragraph:
    when changing the wording of a paragraph to retain the concept is not possible, the paragraph needs to be deleted by preceding the paragraph with the tag
    <A NAME="anchordlbign1 your name - 2007-05-15"></A>,
    and trailing the paragraph with
    <A NAME="anchordlendn1 "></A>;

- inserting new text such as additional concept, examples, localization, or replacement of deleted paragraph:
    the inserted material must be placed in a separate paragraph headed by an anchor of the type
    <A NAME="anchorinbign1 your name - 2007-05-15"></A>
    and trailed by an anchor of the type
    <A NAME="anchorinendn1"></A>;

- changes in the concept as written and deprecation/deletion is questionable:
    such changes must be entered into a comment section so that the changes can be discussed with authors and reviewers; the insertion in the comments section must link to the
    anchor that precedes the paragraph where the concept is outlined.

Except for the small corrections, it is recommended to use the "Insert into course page" procedure, which will process the text to be inserted and add the necessary anchor tags.

The anchors are needed to transmit changes made in one language to correspoding course pages in other languages. Comments sections exist for individual chapters in some courses and are found in the Section pull-down menu, or, for fundamental courses, there may be just one Comments page which is found in the Chapter pull-down menu. If a Comments section is not present, the Appendix section can be used instead.

Recommendations for reviewers

Reviewers should use the Comments section to list their comments pertaining to course pages, preferrably linking to anchors whenever possible, or at least indicate the anchor number. A link tag is constructed as <A HREF="https://www.peoi.org/Courses/Coursesen/page URL/ anchor##### ">anchor#####</A>

What file is saved and retrieved

When a course or chapter is changed, the file that will normally appear first in the "text" section of the chapter. To open a different section than "text", it must be selected in the pull-down menu, and the button "Section" must be clicked. When a page is retrieved, it is initially the latest temporary file. If a different version of the page is desired, it can be selected in the "temporary file" pull-down menu and the "Get" button should be clicked. If there is no temporary file, the only available file for the page is the permanent file. In some rare cases, such as when section and chapter have been switched several times, the file retrieved may not be the latest temporary file, and checking the temporary file pull-down menu can help correct this problem.

When the "Save" button is clicked, the page in the TEXTAREA is always saved in a temporary file which bears the numeral of the latest temporary file plus one.

Before clicking on the "Save" button, it is strongly advised to click on the "Preview" button so that you can verify that the changes made in the page are those you wanted.

Special instructions for Arabic and Farsi

For HTML pages in Arabic and Farsi, the HEAD section must contain the following link to the corresponding style sheet:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://www.peoi.org/css/ar.css"> or
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://www.peoi.org/css/fa.css">

The encoding for Farsi pages is UTF-8, and Farsi pages should contain a line indicating this such as
<META HTTP-EQUIV="content-type" CONTENT="text/html;charset=utf-8" >
If either of these tags is not present in the HEAD section, please make sure to insert it (them).
More guidance on what Arabic and Farsi HTML pages should contain please visit http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/handson/dev/Mideast.mspx

Freeware for translators

PEOI's most experienced translators have been using Cat's Cradle with much praise. Cat's Cradle is a HTML editor that you set up on your computer, and which allows you to translate the text while leaving all the HTML tags unchanged. In other words, you copy the entire page present in the TEXTAREA, paste it into Cat's Cradle, do the translation, and paste the resulting page back into the TEXTAREA. A copy of Cat's Cradle 3.5 can be downloaded by right clicking here , and selecting "Save target as .." in the menu that opens.

Inserting tags for audio, cases, images, tables or document files

Before opening a course page, place a checkmarck to "List" either "audio", "cases", "images", "tables" or "doc". This will cause a list of these resource files to appear just above the Preview box. The list contains the actual tag that needs to be copied and pasted into the HTML page in the TEXTAREA. You must scroll the TEXTAREA to the location where the tag is to be placed, then enter a blank line, copy and paste the tag into that new blank line just above the location where the tag belongs. For audio files, "..." stands for the text and/or image for which the audio file was create, and do not forget to place the closing tag </A> just after that text and/or image. For images, you have to delete the words "Picture here", if such words are present.