A New Social Hieroglyphic Dictionary Wiki
A message from Saint Simian:
Hello to all Egyptologists with computers,
I’ve been working on a web application to help us all with our Hieroglyphic texts. It’s a Hieroglyphic dictionary wiki, like Wikipedia’s wiktionary except for Middle Egyptian hieroglyphs.
A wiki is like a website where everyone can edit the pages. When everyone can edit at will, the number of errors is reduced and the scope of the website is increased. A host of editors can create more than a single person can. With my Hieroglyphic wiki, there is a page for every letter of the alphabet and you can add new dictionary entries as you like.
The trouble with existing dictionaries is that they’re incomplete or out of date. With an online dictionary, it can be constantly updated and as long as people contribute there is no limit to its size. The wiki is very easy to use. You just click “Edit” in the top right corner, copy an existing entry, paste it into place, and fill out the new details. There is also a help page with detailed instructions on how to edit entries and how the markup works.
The great thing about this dictionary is that you don’t need to do any image coding to create the hieroglyphs. All you need to do is type in the Manuel de Codage and the WikiHiero engine will create the glyphs for you. This makes the dictionary extremely simple to edit, and well within the capabilities of any Egyptian scholar. You don’t even need to register to use it, you just start whenever you like.
The wiki is now online and ready to be used. Although I’ve tested it extensively, it is still relatively fresh and there are likely some bugs. If you find a bug I’d really like to hear about it. I have gone through and filled the dictionary with a small number of entries which I’ll continue to add to over time. No wiki can work without user contribution, so I encourage everyone to add new entries if you find one missing, or correct existing entries if you notice mistakes. Perhaps you can look up words as you read an ME text and add them to the dictionary as you go. With your help, we could build a really useful resource for Egyptian scholars.
The wiki is available at:
http://hiero.saintsimian.com/
There is also a forum for questions and discussion:
http://hiero.saintsimian.com/forum/
Thank you, and I hope you will find something useful on the wiki. All feedback is welcome.
Tags: interact, language, technology
I finally decided to write a comment on your blog. I just wanted to say good job. I really enjoy reading your posts.
Tina Russell