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Substitute for glossing?

Posted: 2005-10-08 11:50:35
by Craig Turner
I see a "glossing" function has been talked about (well over a year ago on the forum) so perhaps this will be a function added in the not-too-distant future.
In the meantime, does anyone have a way to make a substitute kind of glossing? I'm working in Pinyin/Traditional Chinese/English within Express--love the operation of second language switching!--and I'd like to do something that approximates the gloss thing. Even wondered if a table (invisible box) would work, or maybe superscripts?

Anyhow, as this beginning student in Chinese fumbles about, do any Nisoids have suggestions?

Much thanks,
Craig Turner

Substitute for glossing?

Posted: 2005-10-08 14:16:20
by woodson
As another beginning Chinese student I'd like to know more about what you mention. Seems like I remember glossing as a part of Classic, but didn't use it as I didn't need anything like it then. Now I might, if I understood what it was.

Thanks, Woodson

Posted: 2005-10-10 17:19:59
by martin
I invite Craig to correct (or extend) what I'm about to say, but basically gloss lets you display a bit of additional text just above your normal text. One of the uses in some Asian languages for this, as I understand it, is to display a more common word form for a particular word above the other form. Eg: Furigana and Katakana.

So, as to gloss in Express: unfortunately we don't currently have it. You could approximate it using tables with invisible borders, but this would not be a feasible approach if you wanted to include the word/gloss inline with other text. But if you were making a word list, or something similar, a table would work nicely.