It would be really useful to have a directory of persons in the Foreigner books. Thus:
1. [name]–[book in which person first appeared] [book in which person suffered some major change, like moving, dying, getting married: ] [Ongoing Job description] [household: eg: Bren’s domestic staff; or in the case of humans, what job] also note changes of household, like Bindanda, who has moved around a bit.
Any one who’d care to do it, I’m setting up a new pagelet entitled: ONGOING PROJECT, and you can put it there, name by name. Ultimately we’ll collate it, alphabetize it, and shift it into a pagelet called REFERENCE.
Did you consider a wiki for this?
Well, I kind of hate to promulgate the thing: I’d rather people just read the books—but it is the kind of thing people here might find useful.
A wiki interface would be helpful, if only to spare a human being from the task of manually curating all contributions. And http://cjcherryh.wikia.com exists but is kinda empty…
Are we tracking changes in spelling, (or is that regional pronunciation), too? Such as Edo/Edi and Kidigidi/Kadagidi?
Probably helpful to track those. I always operate from the latest…just knowing the way my brain works.
I confess I know how to futz with WordPress, but Wiki baffles me.
I’ve put together a mock-up at cjcherryh.wikia.com/wiki/Foreigner_Dramatis_Personæ. Treat it like a word processor with copy-paste; no need to learn wiki syntax. For example, here’s Bren’s entry:
Took me about ten minutes to set up; and I can delete it in ten seconds if you don’t want to go this route.
Another idea might be a publicly-accessible file on Google Documents.
That’s funny. 😉 I’m impressed.
Is there ever going to be a book where Bren’s world gets turned sideways?
Hahah, Joe beat me to it. Sideways it is.
This wiki seems quite easy to work with. I’ve never worked on a wiki before, but I just tried it, and it worked.
I clicked on ‘Edit’ at the start of the entry, added the points mentioned below, about species and nationality, and moved the list of books to the bottom of the entry (just like working in any text-based document), then clicked on the ‘Publish’ button to the right.
Hey presto, JCSalomon’s text was changed.
(Sorry, I forgot to add a summary of what I did before I published it.)
It seems easier than the spreadsheet, to me; but maybe harder to get some kinds of information out of.
Another suggestion: I think it might be a good idea to add an element where we can put a short CV (Curriculum Vitae), or soemethin like that. We could use that to put in something about people’s birthdate/age, or important events that happened before the books started, like Illisidi coming from the East to marry Tabini’s grandfather.
It would be easier in a spreadsheet of some sort. I’d be willing to help coordinate it, if someone else would convert the spreadsheet to a html table. I know Excell puts lots of extras in. If volunteers each took different books, then we could put data into the same flavor spreadsheet, and maniputlate data. Once that part was done, then other people could do the corrections and you would be able to post a update periodically (monthly). Sending corrections to the coordinators not you nor Jane!
How’s this? [link to spreadsheet]
Basically, the Internet makes possible many forms of collaborative editing; we fans will use whichever form Herself finds most handy.
Just sent a tiny sample of what the spreadsheet could look like via email. Was not able to copy/paste an example here. A single character could have multiple lines if something major happened in their life.
Could I persuade you to put the mock-up somewhere publicly accessible?
I will make another tomorrow. I had no idea Google documents existed! Wow. We use Sharepoint for collaboration at work. My only fear is the smart alek who wants to cause trouble.
I did discover that I can convert a snip to .html as I was closing the utility. I will create a .jpg in the morning. Take my snip, copy to Powerpoint and save as .jpg. I have never saved Excel as .html, but it is probably possible. I connect using my Nook from home 99% of the time.
Saving Excel to HTML is asking for a nightmare.
However, the idea of a spreadsheet has merit. So does a wiki. … I don’t have any experience with Wiki syntax and editing.
Another possibility might be to set up a subforum at Shejidan where draft entries could be maintained, one thread topic per character.
Something for the Wiki: Tags for what species and nationality the character is. Tags for family name or aishid and given names and nickname. Examples:
Cameron, Bren — human Mospheiran;
Tabini-aiji — atevi Ragi;
Ilisidi aiji-dowager — atevi Ragi;
Babsidi — mecheita Ragi; Belongs to Ilisidi;
In the case of Babsidi, she is listed as Ragi because she is Ilisidi’s mecheita and therefore Ragi.
The entries for Tabini-aiji, Ilisidi, and Babsidi should list their family or aishid.
a lot of this is listed in my Ragi grammar and dictionary.
I can pull the table out of the mess Excell creates, but it looks as if WordPress doesn’t allow for those items in comments. I tried and hit preview, I got a listing rather than a table.
I tell you—I’m not going to dictate on this, if you guys can work out a method that works.
Sounds like you lost control of it anyway. 😉
Uhmmm… Folks? Illisidi’s husband was Ragi, as Valisidi was and Tabini is; she is not, which is rather the point.
Many people using spreadsheets, can send to a single person who can copy/paste the info together. As long as the spreadsheets are compatible. I suspect that BSC could convert a file to html. I was able to do that with Excel and stripping the table out was easy. My thought is person A choses their favorite novel and creats the spreadsheet in approved columns. Person B does a fact and typing check. Put as many files into one as possible, converted to .html. THEN we give it to CJ. I have seen the books on Valdemar and Star Trek, original series, both done by single people. This could be credited to everyone that lends a hand. The final items would be a table that could be inserted into the tool CJ currently uses for web development. If you want to put the working table on Shejidan. OK. That could be used for corrections and fact checking. If a character has a major change in his life in every book, then there could be another line. One per book.
It would be easy to copy/paste the various files into a single large file. Excel will permit the saving of a spreadsheet as a .pdf if that would be easier to upload into .html.
The more we can use from HRHSpence’s Ragi dictionary the better. I don’t believe in re-inventing the wheel.
This is in .csv format. To move this into your spreadsheet, you need to know how to convert it. This was also pasted into Notepad for ease of moving it to the comments section, so the returns may not work exactly right.
Name Introduced Major change Job description Household Relationship Race
Cajeiri DEFENDER DEFENDER Moved in with Ilisidi (grandmother) Ilisidi Gr_grandson Atevi
Danda See Bindanda
Ramirez, Stani INVADER DEFENDER Death Phoenix Captain Human
Kroger, Virginia ‘Gin’ PRECURSOR DEFENDER “Engineer, Robotics Expert, Join group on
Phoenix for rescue mission” Leader Engineers Human
Name | Race/origin | Status| Job |
Forgeiner Illisidi Aeteva/Malguri aiji Aiji of the East
Residence(s) | Change| Alliances
Malguri, Bujavid never Tabini
Is this kind of what is wanted? Enough categories? By book or by character? Are we going to sort out place names too? I would think that would need its own sheet…
Wiki would be the easiest.
Spreadsheet, IMHO should be hosted on Google groups, and then we could transfer ownership to our esteemed author.
I agree with Tommie – we should have people on one sheet, places on another.
We might even want to break it out as Humans, Atevi, Places, Flora-Fauna.
I added one or two items in my example, but I went with what CJ put at the top of the page. She didn’t mention place names. In my example I put Phoenix under household and would probably put Foreign Office there, too. That’s just me. If you think about it, Phoenix is Jase’s household. Barb doesn’t have a clan/household, I would probably list ‘none’. To me, place names fit better into HRHSpence’s dictionary. I read this as more just a listing of characters. Other people added Babsidi and Nokada who do have personalities.
I agree that wiki would be the easiest, although it would be wise to appoint one or two “masters” who can double check things, fix oopsies, that sort of minor “policing.” It seems to me (having done a wiki for a D&D game, many moon ago) that there’s not a great deal of syntax to learn – tags being about all you’d need to worry over, and that should be an easy tutorial (even for the rank beginner like me!).
My problems with the Google documents.
1. I don’t trust the cloud. What happens when Google is eventually hacked and everything is lost?
2. I can’t use it because I’m on IE 8. Yes, I will need to download Firefox for a work project, but some browers are not compatible. I’m not picky about browsers. I learn to use one and that’s all I need. In my case the database we use has refused to work with anything other than IE. My fastest connection is at work and I could type during lunch. I can connect from home, but I don’t have a surface to type on yet.
3. Most of the major spreadsheets should be able to save as a .pdf which should be able to be uploaded by Jane or Carolyn. Anyone could print a .pdf for their own pleasure.
My problem with a wiki is how many people are going to come along and overwrite what I did? My thought of a spreadsheet puts everything in a quickly visible format. Bren will have one row per book. If it is a public spreadsheet, the properties would have to be read only. once the project is up to date.
Can Google documents accept copy/paste? I don’t know if I could create a .csv file and merge it with Google documents? My plan is to take one novel and list all of the characters. I have no idea who else is actually going to work on this project.
I would like to see a timeline, but that would be a different thing. It could be a single image. Plants and locations belong in HRHSpence’s dictionary. Najida is not a character. Nokhada is an animal, but has a personality. Personally, I’d put Nokhada in the dictionary, but if a reader saw that name for the first time and went Who? Having the name in the list of characters would work.
Maybe we need to think in terms of who is the customer? Who will use this once it’s finished? Spreadsheets are not as pretty as a wikis, but this is rote data entry that you can scan across the line faster than reading lines of information. (Yes, I prefer recipes to have instructions on different lines, not paragraphs.)
My thought is to create all of the information for one book, and then make it public, not a few characters per day in the same novel being done. If you’re not certain where so-and-so was introduced, leave it blank if not in the novel you’re working from. It can be inserted later.
Ok, a co-worker explained Google documents to me. It uses Chrome and the need for a Google mail account. I still will push for a .pdf version on CJ’s web site.