“Sing Out Joyfully” Bk. Partially Proofread Pīnyīn Web Material Available for the Songs for January 15–21 Meetings

The songs to be sung at Mandarin meetings and assemblies are now songs from the new songbook, “Sing Out Joyfully” to Jehovah (sjj).

Thankfully, an official Pīnyīn PDF file for this new songbook is now available for download from jw.org. (The short link for the new songbook, tiandi.info/sjj, has been updated accordingly.) Note, however, that the currently available official Pīnyīn PDF file does not contain musical notation. It only contains lyrics, and only for some of the songs. The songs it contains lyrics for include songs scheduled to be used at upcoming meetings, but not the songs scheduled to be used at upcoming circuit assemblies. A more complete official version of the new songbook with both musical notation and Pīnyīn lyrics is undoubtedly in the works, but was not available from jw.org, the WOL, or the JW Library app at the time of this writing.

While we greatly appreciate the official Pīnyīn songbook PDF file that is available, the PDF format itself was conceived of in a world dominated by paper. Unfortunately, that means that PDF files are often not optimal for reading on the mobile devices that are now so prevalent among Mandarin field publishers.

Also, with past official Pīnyīn songbook PDF files, having to share limited display real estate with Chinese characters and musical notation has at times forced the Pīnyīn text to be rendered in small type that can be difficult to read, especially for older people.

Partially proofread Pīnyīn web material (better at least than auto-generated Pīnyīn like that displayed by the Equipd app, and more mobile-friendly than the older 3-line PDFs) for all the songs scheduled to be used during the January 15–21 meetings has been posted to this resource that seeks to help with these challenges:

• “Sing Out Joyfully” Bk.
  (Pīnyīn+Music, Pīnyīn Plus, Web)
  (proofread, mobile-friendly,
  links for getting around,
  song links sorted by number;
  Pīnyīn+Music: prezoomed to use full screen width,
  easy-to-read font;
  Pīnyīn Plus: flashcards integrated with the text,
  context-appropriate English translations
  with literal & effective meanings,
  Simplified & Traditional characters,
  📖 Reveal All, 📄 Reveal Advanced, and
  📘 Reveal None controls
  for all the “flashcards” in a
  song, paragraph, etc.,
  Night Theme that can be turned on or off
  using the ☀️/🌙 button at the top right,
  adjustable text size)
  (Info re offline viewing and printing)
  
• Short Links:
  Links ▶ Publications ▶ Books ▶
  “Sing Out Joyfully” Book Links (tiandi.info/sjj)

(Note: The above resource used to be called “Sing Out Joyfully” Bk. (Pīnyīn, Music, Web). The name was adjusted because now the resource also includes Pīnyīn Plus technology.)

Material for other songs will be added to the above resource as time allows. Priority will be given to songs that will be used at upcoming assemblies and meetings, and that are not yet covered by the official Pīnyīn songbook material.

The Pīnyīn songbook material in the above unofficial resource has been designed to be mobile-first, so it works well on mobile devices of various shapes and sizes, including tablets and smartphones. Some of the ways in which it does so are:

• Song material with musical notation automatically loads “prezoomed” to take full advantage of the width of your device’s display, so as to render its Pīnyīn lyrics in as large a size as possible.
• In the song material with musical notation, the typeface (font) chosen for the Pīnyīn lyrics is one that is especially legible at smaller text sizes.
• The lyrics-only material uses Pīnyīn Plus technology, so the text automatically reflows according to the width of the display. Also, the text can be set to different sizes by the user, and a Night Theme is available. As time allows, more Pīnyīn Plus “flashcards” will be added, with their English translations, Chinese characters, etc.

The introduction for the above resource explains why it’s good to use Pīnyīn as a writing system on its own.

In the material with musical notation in the above resource, the Pīnyīn lyrics do not have Pīnyīn Plus “flashcard” functionality because they need to stay aligned with the musical notation. As time allows, Pīnyīn lyrics will be presented on their own as well, using Pīnyīn Plus technology. This will allow for the adding of Pīnyīn Plus “flashcards” with English translations, Chinese characters, etc. in the future.

While the original intention re the above resource was to prioritize production of material with musical notation and leave off production of Pīnyīn Plus lyrics-only material indefinitely, further analysis has led to the realization that since proofread Pīnyīn lyrics must be produced in some form for the musical notation material anyway, and since Pīnyīn Plus technology is a time-effective way to record proofread Pīnyīn text, it would be efficient to first produce proofread Pīnyīn lyrics in Pīnyīn Plus format for a particular song, and then to use those proofread Pīnyīn lyrics to speed up the production of musical notation material for that song. So, that will be the production workflow going forward for the above resource.

(Interestingly, the organization is also using a lyrics-only material first approach with the official Pīnyīn material for the new songbook. Hopefully, both the official and unofficial Pīnyīn resources for the new songbook will thus be helped to contain the most needed material producible, considering the time and resources available.)

While previously, musical notation in the above resource was taken from screenshots of an official PDF file, the musical notation for song 77 marks the debut of material produced “from scratch” to be mobile-first in design. This should provide for better and more consistent user experiences going forward, especially on smaller mobile devices like smartphones.