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Help with Essays
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THL has built a powerful publishing system for English-language scholarship to be accessed and disseminated over the Web. The present page details the features of this system from the point of view of the end user, as well as for contributors interested in submitting scholarship to THL. This publishing system is used for all essays in THL, including the Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies and Encyclopedias.
Header
Each article has a header which provides the title, author's name, author's institutional affiliation, a specification of the relevant copyright notice, a specification of what THL resource this belongs to along with any relevant ID # (such as JIATS issue number for the Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies), and a specification of how many sections it has along with an indication of which section is currently showing (such as "Section 1 of 6"). It also shows the ID# of the essay as such.
On the first section of the essay, the font of the header is black and larger; on all subsequent sections, the header has a smaller grayed out font to make clear to the reader that they are not on the first page of the essay. Thus the first page's header stands in for a traditional title page.
The copyright notice is linked to a page which details the terms of that copyright.
Footer
The footer at present is simple – it has a link back to the top of the page labeled "To Top of Page", and it has three blue arrows pointing to the left, up and right. The left arrow leads to the preceding section of the article, the up arrow leads to the first section of the article, and the right arrow leads to the subsequent section of the article. This allows readers to read to the bottom of a section, and then right at the bottom of the section click on the "next" arrow to keep reading the next section. We have instituted these threefold arrows in two sections – one at the bottom of the text of a given section and below that section's footnotes, and one below the section's footnotes. Thus users have easy of navigation whether they read the footnotes or not.
Body of Essay
In general, all foreign language terms appearing in roman transliteration – Tibetan, Sanskrit, Chinese, etc. – appear in italics for terms and titles, but appear with first letter capitalized without italics for proper names – people, places, and organizations. People's names also have their birth and death dates indicated parenthetically on their first occurrence in the text. This means that strictly speaking, the Tibetan transliteration diverges from pure Extended Wylie on this single issue.
In addition, if the author has offered an English translation of a given term or title, that term or title will appear in English throughout the essay, and on first occurrence only the corresponding Tibetan term will be indicated parenthetically either in Wylie, Phonetics or Tibetan script.
Footnotes
Footnotes are indicated by blue superscribed numbers in brackets. By clicking on that number, the browser will jump down to the corresponding footnote. By then clicking on that footnote's number after reading the footnote, the browser will leap back to the place in the text where the footnote is found.
Basic Navigation
An essay is presented on the left side of the page, and includes an interactive table of contents on the right. Just click on the section you want to view. You can also click on the arrows at the bottom of each essay or at the bottom of the right hand side menu to proceed section by section.
Essays have a right-hand navigation box – essentially an enhanced table of contents – with four sections given here from top to bottom: a possible home link back to the section in which this essay is embedded, a table of contents, controls, specify view, specify format, and arrows for navigating through the essay. arrowback links with help link, and navigation arrows. This box is present throughout all sections of the essay and provides easy controls for navigation through an essay, as well as seeing different views.
The table of content lists the names of the essay's sections in the box's top portion, each of which can be clicked on to jump to that section of the essay. The essay opens up with the first section of the essay showing only, and users must click on the next section to keep reading. The box indicates which section is currently actively showing through changing the section title into italics, and highlighting it with a light colored background. Please note that if you want to view the entire document at one time, you should go to the "Controls" section where "Specify View" offers that option. The top portion of the box includes a link to a separate bibliography, a glossary if present, and a separate "notes" section showing all the notes for the essay together.
Interactive Glossary
Each essay may have a glossary, which is available through the table of contents. These glossaries provide all technical terms, names, and titles used in the article, and allow readers to order it by the different languages.
The glossary gives a full list of Tibetan words indicating their orthographically correct transliteration (in THL Extended Wylie), phonetic rendering (in THL Phonetics), English Translation, and "type" (text title, term, place name, personal name, etc.). There are basically four types of terms: text titles, personal names (people, deities, organizations, traditions), place names, and technical terms. It has fields for "abbreviated" term in Tibetan and corresponding translations. This is of particular use for text titles, where you may want to have the full title occur on first instance, but an abbreviated title on subsequent occurrences. For people, there is also a field for birth and death dates, so that these can appear in parentheses next to the first occurrence of a person. End users of the glossary can view the glossary as ordered alphabetically by the translation, Tibetan term, or type of term, simply by clicking on the corresponding category at the top of the glossary. These tables are also used for the transformations that provide three different views for the article which differ in terms of how Tibetan terms are rendered. We plan to soon add another field to the table so that an author can give a translation of a term, but specify it not be used throughout. In addition, we need to add a markup convention that allows an author in any given context to override the default controls.
Specify View: Scholarly and Public Views
Specifying view gives the options of "scholarly" and "public" views. The main function at present is to change how Tibetan terms and names are rendered - the former gives the precise spelling, and the latter gives easy to pronounce forms.
Go to the table of contents underneath the names of the essay's sections, and you will find the control "Specify View". This is a drop down list with the choices Popular View or Scholarly View. At present these views differ only in regards to how Tibetan words are displayed. This is an important issue with Tibetan since Tibetan terms have orthography which is quite divergent from their pronunciation. Thus the properly spelled term is all but impossible for people who don't know Tibetan to pronounce, leading to problems with retention and use. At the same time Tibetanists need the proper spelling. In addition, ethnic Tibetans may have difficultly reading the roman transliteration of Tibetan, and hence will prefer Tibetan script versions of Tibetan names and terms. At the same time, scholars who don't know Tibetan language may still desire to know the proper spelling of Tibetan names and terms for scholarly reference purposes. Thus there are distinct communities of users who have strong needs to see Tibetan words in roman script transliteration (using the THL Extended Wylie scheme), roman script phonetic rendering (using the THL Simplified Phonetics scheme), or Tibetan script (using Unicode encoding).
- Popular View: Tibetan terms are shown in the THL Simplified Phonetics rendering for easy pronunciation. On the first occurrence, the THL Extended Wylie transliteration is indicated parenthetically. If there is an English translation, the English translation occurs throughout, and the phonetics appear parenthetically only on the first occurrence.
- Scholarly View: Tibetan terms are shown in the THL Extended Wylie for precise spelling. At present, Tibetan proper names appear without italics with the first non-apostrophe letter capitalized; Tibetan terms and titles are in italics and without any capitals. If there is an English translation, the English translation occurs throughout, and the Wylie appears parenthetically only on the first occurrence.
Specify Format
Specify Format: this is a drop down list with the choices, Normal, Whole Document, Print, PDF.
- Normal: this default format shows a single section of the essay at a time together with the left-hand side navigation box.
- Whole Document: shows the entire document on the Web at one time so you can scroll up and down to see all the sections together. It maintains the left-hand side navigation box.
- Print: provides a view of the document that can be more easily printed. In essence, it strips the view of the navigation box, shows all the sections of the essay together, and places all the notes together in a final section.
- PDF: provides a view of a PDF of the essay. This can also be downloaded here, or on the separate downloads page for offline use. However it can also be useful for viewing on the Web when, for example, one lacks the appropriate fonts.
Navigational Arrows
Navigation arrows: has three arrows pointing to the left, up and right. The left arrow leads to the preceding section of the article, the up arrow leads to the first section of the article, and the right arrow leads to the subsequent section of the article. These arrows also appear at the bottom of each page, so that one can come to the end of the given section and just click on the arrow right there to proceed to the next section.