Aoidoi.org one year old

[annis]

Actually, it happened last week, but this month marks the one year anniversary of my public announcement of Aoidoi's existence.

Only about 1000 poems left to comment! Ignoring the Anthology, of course.

[Carola]

Congratulations - you have obviously put a lot of work into this site and I feel I should rush out and start studying Greek. Perhaps when I get through a bit more Latin I will do this (I am still trying to decide between Classical Arabic & Greek).

It's also good to see a site with some content rather than a lot of flashy graphics and similar rubbish - you and Jeff have obviously used your good taste! Imagine trying to read a book with adverts popping out of the pages at you or flashing lights and revolving print - people would just throw it away in disgust. That's about what I feel like doing with most web sites.

[mingshey]

Congrats. William!

Although I seldom visit there(simply because my greek is not up to that level).

[annis]

It's also good to see a site with some content rather than a lot of flashy graphics and similar rubbish - you and Jeff have obviously used your good taste!

I certainly agree with you on bad website design. Some sites make my eyeballs itch just to think about.

At the same time, Aoidoi's design is not just simple, but I think sometimes borders on brutal. Unfortunately, the strange system of images I use to represent greek looks awful against anything but a pure white background.

But I'm glad to know people appreciate content!

[annis]

Congrats. William!

Thanks.

Although I seldom visit there(simply because my greek is not up to that level).

Commented Theognis and the Anacreontics should be the easiest of the bunch. *hint*hint*

[Jeff Tirey]

But I'm glad to know people appreciate content!

Content is king! Congrats on 1 year!

Jeff

[mingshey]

Unfortunately, the strange system of images I use to represent greek looks awful against anything but a pure white background.

I think roughly it's because a GIF picture uses a color table to encode its colors.
How about experimenting with JPG or something else?

And I see you are preparing those greek texts with LaTeX. Why don't you use BabelTeX or ibycus4 to put greek and english in a sigle document? (I must be requiring too much, though.)

[mingshey]

Commented Theognis and the Anacreontics should be the easiest of the bunch. *hint*hint*

Oh, I looked up th "Drink Up" of Anacreontics list. I expected something like one of the Li Bai's drunken poems. Anyway it has some similar elemets in it with a poem sharing the title "Drinking Alone Under the Moon" by Li.

[mariek]

Macte virtute esto! Congratulations!

Milestones are always important.

[annis]

I think roughly it's because a GIF picture uses a color table to encode its colors. How about experimenting with JPG or something else?

It's not just the color table. The conversion from DVI to PostScript involves antialiasing, which introduces shades of grey into the edges of some letters. This looks bad against things other than white, though there are probably tricks I could use to convince LaTeX to use different background colors.

And I see you are preparing those greek texts with LaTeX. Why don't you use BabelTeX or ibycus4 to put greek and english in a sigle document? (I must be requiring too much, though.)

The aoidoi Greek image font is ibycus4.

Early next year I hope to make all the poems available not only on web pages but as LaTeX-generated PDFs. There are some formatting issues I still need to get a handle on to make printed versions reasonable to use.

[annis]

Oh, I looked up th "Drink Up" of Anacreontics list. I expected something like one of the Li Bai's drunken poems. Anyway it has some similar elemets in it with a poem sharing the title "Drinking Alone Under the Moon" by Li.

I don't believe we have reports of either Anacreon or his imitators drowning after trying to hug the reflection of the moon.

Hmm. I bet there's a "tang-shi san bai shou" online somewhere... Ahah!

This one: http://zhongwen.com/x/ts6.htm? (each character can be clicked for a definition!)

[Emma_85]

Yeahh 1 year! Let's hope for another 10 years at least and loads and loads of poems!
(now against all sense of good taste I'll post some party smilies)

[mingshey]

This one: http://zhongwen.com/x/ts6.htm? (each character can be clicked for a definition!)

No, I had this in mind:
(I found it for the first time on the web. I only saw it on a printed book before)
http://www3.telus.net/arts/wunbu/poems/libai_moon.html
-- the second one.

The idea is not the same. But the cosmic elements, the idea of drinking, drinking as if to drink up the whole world, the agony behind them, ...

The site is linked in :
http://www3.telus.net/arts/wunbu/lee_ba.html

[mingshey]

It's not just the color table. The conversion from DVI to PostScript involves antialiasing, which introduces shades of grey into the edges of some letters. This looks bad against things other than white, though there are probably tricks I could use to convince LaTeX to use different background colors.

Enlarging the PS image(on ghostview or acrobat reader, etc) shows only Black-and-White pixels, so, it's probably because you capture the ps images on the screen without zooming in large enough. Anyway, I also prefer the simpler background. And NO eye-annoying moving element!

P.S. the ghostscript does not provide enough zoom. Try dvipdf and zooming in in acrobat reader before capturing.
(Knuth says in his TeXBook that teX paints black and white pixels only. )

The aoidoi Greek image font is ibycus4.

Indeed, I had to check the tex source. How do you encode macrons and breves in ibycus4? BabelTex encoding has '-' and '^', for macron and breve respectively, and Betacode has '>' and '<' for macron. But ibycus4 seems to have nothing for those signs??

Early next year I hope to make all the poems available not only on web pages but as LaTeX-generated PDFs. There are some formatting issues I still need to get a handle on to make printed versions reasonable to use.

I'll look forward to seeing that. And I hope I make a good progress in greek about that time.

[annis]

Indeed, I had to check the tex source. How do you encode macrons and breves in ibycus4?

I don't, since ibycus4 doesn't have these. I used LaTeX to generate the metrical sigla, then just dumped them out to images, and my HTML pre-processor lets me give them nice names. I had to do stuff like this:

Code: Select all

\def\eithor{{\Huge \raise0.2ex\hbox{\Huge$\breve{ }$\lower0.3ex\hbox{$\bar{ }$}\hskip 12pt }}}

But I never fiddled with the hboxing to get them to float correctly in a line of text.

However I recently discovered that someone came up with a metrical macro package called 'metre'. A search at CTAN on 'metre' will bring it up. It has nicer signs for some of the trickier things.

[vinobrien]

Congratulations - you almost persuade me I can read Greek. The Sappho is wonderful by the way.

[annis]

Congratulations - you almost persuade me I can read Greek.

Excellent!

The Sappho is wonderful by the way.

The little four-line one? δέδυκε μὲν ἀ σελάννα? It's the first piece of Greek I ever memorized.

[vinobrien]

As everyone should. It is so beautiful but strange to someone who has learned Attic.

Keep at it, William, Anacreon too:λεγουσιν ἀι γυναικες γερων τε Vιλλιαμ

[Keesa]

Belated congratulations, William! Keep it up!