Wednesday, August 14, 2013

New Resources: Jehovah’s Will Brochure (Pīnyīn-English, Web, Scriptures) Pages

While there have been 3-line PDFs for part of the Jehovah’s Will brochure for a while now (links can be found at the short link for Jehovah’s Will brochure material, tiandi.info/jl), the PDF format is rooted in the print world, with its fixed page sizes. As mobile devices became more and more common, it was found that the letter/A4 page size originally used for the 3-line PDFs made them quite hard to use on smaller mobile devices such as the iPhone, and it also made for smaller-than-intended text even on larger tablets like the iPad.


(How common are mobile devices getting to be? One highly relevant indication is that visits to 3lines.org from mobile devices are on track to start outnumbering visits to that site from desktops/laptops in just a few months.)


Eventually, some 3-line PDFs that used A5 as their page size began to be produced, which usually worked satisfactorily on mobile devices. However, producing A5 versions of 3-line PDFs requires extra work from already-busy 3-line producers, so A5 versions have been produced for only some of the 3-line PDFs. Even when they are available, they present extra complexity to users who need to compare them to the letter/A4 PDFs and then choose which to use in their situation.


As well, the PDF format is not the native format of the web browser you would use to go to the download pages of the PDF files. Thus, while PDF files can be downloaded, and often even viewed, with a web browser, they still represent some added complexity for people looking for Chinese field resources on the web.


So, for reasons such as those above, I have come up with a new set of resources for the Jehovah’s Will brochure:

Note: Be sure to view the Pīnyīn-English web pages above using one of the web browsers listed in their Recommended Browsers: sections. Otherwise, the Pīnyīn-English web material in them will not look its best.


To start with, material is available on these new resources covering from the front cover to the introduction, and also Lesson 9 of the Jehovah’s Will brochure. (The existing 3-line PDFs already cover up to Lesson 8. I plan to first cover Lesson 9 to the end with the new Pīnyīn-English web pages, and then go back and fill in the material for Lessons 1 to 8.) The full text in Pīnyīn-English of the cited scriptures is included.


Of course, while the Pīnyīn-English web pages were designed to just work on desktop and laptop PCs and Macs and on modern mobile devices with displays of various shapes and sizes, they can still be printed out from the web browsers used to view them, as long as these have printing capability.


More background information can be found in the Introductions of these new web pages:

Pīnyīn, With English Ruby Text

This material contains text from the Chinese Jehovah’s Will brochure, written in Pīnyīn. It also includes English ruby text that has been bundled with the Pīnyīn text that it shows the meaning of. Thus, while making better use of limited display real estate on mobile devices and requiring less paper to print out compared to corresponding 3-line material, this material provides us Mandarin-learners with assistance in the two language aspects we require in order to be able to discuss or study the Jehovah’s Will brochure with someone in Mandarin:

  1. The pronunciations of the Mandarin words used
    • These show us how to communicate the brochure’s message in Mandarin.
  2. The meanings of the Mandarin words used
    • These show us what is being communicated in Mandarin.

Advantages of the Web Format

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Pīnyīn is a Good, Workable Writing System On Its Own

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Disclaimer

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Translation and Proofreading

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Offline Viewing

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Updates and Other Information

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The below-listed Pīnyīn-only web pages will continue to be available as well:

With the above Pīnyīn-only web pages, when the mobile device they are loaded on is turned to landscape orientation, the text in them becomes large-print text. (The text of the Pīnyīn-English web pages is set to stay the same size when the device is turned to landscape orientation, so that there is more room for the English ruby text.)


A Pīnyīn-only EPUB file for the Jehovah’s Will brochure is also available:

I plan to eventually make a Pīnyīn-English EPUB file for the Jehovah’s Will brochure available as well.


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