|
FAQ:
Creativyst(R) Glossary
Frequently Asked Questions.
Contents
How do I get Creativyst(R) Glossary
for my web or intranet site?
How many terms can glossary hold?
There is no real limit theoretically. How many you can hold depends mainly on
your system and how many resources your hosting service allows. On my host
(this is a guess, since I've never tested it) it's probably around 7-10
thousand definitions per each of the 26 letters, and another 7-10 thousand for
the # category, or about a quarter million overall.
Can I use fancy fonts and other special
formatting in the text of my definitions?
Yes. - Creativyst(R) Glossary is fully
CUF
compliant. CUF codes are simple tags that allow your non-technical
glossarists to format their definition text exactly as they want. It can be a
simple as just typing text into the form field or more complicated if desired.
For example to place the bolded phrase this is bold in a
definition field, glossarists type "[b]this is bold[/b]" when typing the words
into the definition field. CUF tags go from very simple (type your text) to
very advanced capabilities. Somewhere, closer to the simple side, there are
tags for [font], and [size], just to name a couple.
Can I include images and tables
in the text of my definitions?
Yes. - As mentioned above, Creativyst(R) Glossary is a
CUF
compliant application. With more advanced CUF tags, your glossarists will be
able to include tables, images, images that link to other glossary definitions,
and images that link to outside resources. There's much more.
Can I include links to other glossary
terms within my definitions?
Yes. - As stated, by using special formatting codes called
CUF
codes in Creativyst(R) Glossary, your glossarists can add many advanced
features and resources to the text of their definitions. In the case of links
to other terms within your glossary, glossarists simply use a [glossary] tag.
The term "SQL" for example can be embedded into the text of a
different definition by including it like this: "the term [glossary=SQL]
is related to this term..."
How about links to outside web sites and
resources?
Yes. - Creativyst(R) Glossary's support for
CUF
formatting codes allows glossarists to include URL links to outside resources
in their definitions.
Can I embed links INTO my glossary
from the text of documents on my site?
Yes. We can (for example) include a link for the term
glossary here in this page.
There is also example JavaSript code included in the distribution that will allow page visitors to highlight a word anywhere in the page, and hit the 'g' key (for glossary) to display the glossary entry for that term. To see this feature in action go to our Accessibility question here in this FAQ. You may also include a search field for glossary terms within your site's pages.
Can I make Glossary's displays look
just like the rest of my site?
Yes. - Creativyst(R) Glossary's displays are based on template
files. You can use a page from your site as a template file, formatting it
exactly as you would any other page on your site. You simple tell the glossary
script where to put the various parts of the definitions within your page.
This is done with special HTML comments, which will be replaced with the
various fields for the display of the term and its content. We include SSIText
template fields so you can even make your SSI based site work right.
Do I have to set up my glossary in
HTML frames like the glossary at Creativyst's web site?
No. - We set up our glossary in HTML frames to show that it
can be done in frames if you'd like. It is just as easy to set it up as a
single non-frame page with a variety of options. For
instance, you can have your page display all the words in a given letter along
with their definitions. You can also set up your non-frame page to list all
the words in the letter, but to only display one word's definition text at a
time.
We have a Non-frame example page to display our normal glossary database. This also demonstrates how a single database of terms can be presented in a variety of different ways by specifying different templates.
I want the links in my glossary to increase
my google hits ... will this software help me with that?
I don't know for sure. A lot of creativyst.com's page-views/hits are in the
glossary, but whether it produces Google "rank" really depends on if a bunch of
other web-sites decide to link to it. As for traffic, at least part of that
can be explained in the nature of a good glossary. Other glossary terms within
a given definition are links back into the glossary itself for pages that
display definitions of those terms.
We currently keep our list of terms
and definitions in an Excel spreadsheet. Can we load these into Creativyst Glossary without having to re-type them?
Yes. - Creativyst(R) Glossary will import CSV files containing
its terms and their definitions. Excel lets you save your spread-sheet as
CSV which you can then import in one felled swoop, into Creativyst(R) Glossary.
Can we download the list of terms and
definitions from Creativyst Glossary so that we can work with them in Excel?
Yes. - Not only does Glossary IMPORT CSV files from your
Microsoft(tm) Excel program, it also EXPORTS CSV files so you can work on them
in Creativyst(R) Glossary, and then get them back into your Excel spreadsheet.
Will Glossary accept words that have
letters with diacritical marks?
Yes. - Creativyst® Glossary will faithfully
display characters with diacritical marks.
For sorting purposes, Creativyst(R) Glossary will map
letters with diacritical marks into the 26 base letters in the western
alphabet. Important: Creativyst(R) Glossary uses the international standard
8859-01 for letters with diacritical marks. Microsoft uses a nonstandard
range of character-codes to represent letters with diacritical marks, so you
may have to make some adjustments if you are moving your glossary over from a
Windows(tm) environment.
What if a term a user is looking for isn't
in our site's glossary database?
two things can happen - Both are optional of course.
We can make a convincing argument that such a set up is still REST because:
In any case, if you set your entire glossary up in non-frames pages, this point is moot.
Is Creativyst® Glossary accessible?
Not nearly as accessible as I would like. But it's always improving in
this area. Here's what we
do provide.
Will Glossary work with Unicode languages?
No. - Not at this time. Sorry.
Will this work on my site that is
constructed using Server Side Includes (SSI)?
Yes. One of the template fields provided by Creativyst(R)
Glossary is <!--~:SSIText ... -->. If your site is
constructed using Server Side includes, you can use this template field to
include SSI text components directly in your glossary display pages, just as
you would use the <!--#include virtual --> tag in your
static pages.
Can I run this over my office LAN
without connecting it to the Internet?
Yes. - When you have an intranet web-server running on your
office LAN and a free application called Perl is installed. On most platforms,
Perl is included as a matter of course. On Windows servers, you will have to
download Perl (it's free) and install it.
Is source code included?
No, not really. - Well, it is, but it's been scrunched up into
a tight little wad to improve run-time performance. More importantly, the
licensing terms don't permit you to make modifications to the source code
beyond configuration, so it is effectively closed source.
Is this software PC compatible?
Yes, but there are two parts to the answer that can be
instructive to explore:
1. Compatible data formats? Yes.: It will read lists of terms and their definitions from Office Excel, so you can maintain a list using Excel if you'd like. It will also output Excel files so you can maintain your glossary online and also import it into MS-Office. 2. Can it be run on Windows? Yes: Creativyst(R) Glossary is a platform-independent application that runs on a web. In this case, that means it will run on any platform that has Perl installed. Caveat: Windows(tm) is one of the few O.S.'s in existence that doesn't come with Perl pre-installed. You will have to install Perl yourself to make Windows run this, or any platform-independent application. That's not really a problem, Perl for Windows is a free download on the Web.
Permissions
This article is © Copyright, Creativyst, Inc. 2005 ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED.
Links to this article are always welcome. However, you may not copy, modify, or distribute this work or any part of it without first obtaining express written permission from Creativyst, Inc. Production and distribution of derivative products, such as displaying this content along with directly related content in a common browser view are expressly forbidden! Those wishing to obtain permission to distribute copies of this article or derivatives in any form should contact Creativyst. Permissions printed over any code, DTD, or schema files are supported as our permission statement for those constructs. |