The purpose of this form is for us at Linguru to learn something about you and for all dictionary users to learn something about each other. We wish to foster a sense of community among the users of our software. We do not give this information to third parties. It will only reside on our server and will only be publicly accessible from the Users page of this site if you choose to publish your email address and personal web page.
You must type something in every text field followed by a * or whose checkbox is followed by a *. Check the box labeled "publish" next to a field if you are willing to make its contents public. Press <preview> to see your personal web page. If you like what you see, submit your information and enroll. If you wish to change what you have written, press <revise> or the back button on your browser to return to this form. Press <reset> if you wish to clear all the fields and start over.
There is an explanation of the purpose of each field and how to fill it out at the bottom of the page. Simply click on the label for a field to go to its explanation. Click on the label for the explanation to come back to the form.
We prefer that users publish their actual names. People feel more accountable for and take more pride in actions that are attributable to them. We want users of the dictionaries to take pride in their contributions. We also want users to restrain themselves from doing anti-social things.
On the other hand, we do not require that users publish their names. If you are shy or simply wish to remain private, you may publish only part of your name, or you may refrain from publishing any part of your name at all.
If you choose to publish your name or part of your name, it will appear on the user roster on the users page and on your personal web page.
Your user name is the name you will go by when you sign comments or other contributions to the dictionary. You will need a user name and password to obtain the browser; and your browser will use your user name whenever it logs in to the server. Your user name will appear on the user roster on the users page, whether or not you choose to publish anything else.
Your user name cannot be longer than 12 characters. It may contain letters of the alphabet, any digit from 0 to 9, the underscore character, '_', or the period, '.'. It cannot begin with a period. If some user is already using the name you suggest, you will be ask for another name.
We require your e-mail address in order to send you your password. You may wish to publish your e-mail address so that other users can contact you. The more the users of the Linguru dictionaries are able to communicate with each other, the more they will feel like a community.
If you choose to publish your e-mail address, it will appear as an e-mail link on the user roster and on your personal web page: others will be able to send you an e-mail message simply by clicking on your e-mail address. Of course, if you choose not to publish your e-mail address, you are still free to include it in your personal web page.
We are giving each user a personal web page so that they have an identity within the community of users of the Linguru dictionaries. You can say whatever you wish about yourself on your page (although we do impose a limit of 2400 characters on the text you enter into this field). We encourage your to publish your page.
The text you type into this field of the form will appear as part of the body of your web page (see 'HTML' and 'text' below). If you publish it, it will be accessible via a link in your row of the user roster on the users page.
Think of the title of your personal web page as a one-word -- 16 characters or fewer -- abstract of the page's contents. It may be a description of what you do, a nickname, something you like or would like to be associated with -- anything. The primary function of the title is as a phrase one may click on in your row of the user roster to go to your personal web page. It will appear there and on the page itself. If you do not publish your web page, your title also will not be published. If you publish your web page but provide no title, the word self-description will appear in its place in the roster and will serve as the link to your page.
If you submit your description as HTML, you can
only format it with HTML tags. That means if you type
<return> to insert a line break, no line break will appear in
your description. If you use <tab> or the spacebar to indent
text at the beginning of a line, this indentation will not appear
in your description. On the other hand, the text will look better
and will be automatically formatted to fit the screen of whoever is
reading it. If you want to insert a carriage return into your HTML,
type '<br>' instead of pressing <return>.
See below.
If you submit your description as text, you have to decide where the carriage returns are and you can use <tab> or the spacebar to indent text at the beginning of a line. Your text won't look as good and it won't be automatically formatted to fit the window of whoever is looking at it, but you won't have to worry about HTML at all. See below.
If you check the box labeled "publish" next to a field, the contents of that field will be made visible to all who visit the users page of this site. We encourage you to do this. Others will be more interested in your contributions to the dictionaries if they know who you are. You will be more interested in contributing if you know that others will be able to attribute the contribution to you.
If at first you wish to remain anonymous and merely observe the dictionaries and the community that grows up around them, that is fine. You can always shed your anonymity later. The only information on this form you will be stuck with after you enroll are your user name and password. Everything else you may revise whenever you like, including whether or not you publish your identity.
The Linguru dictionaries depend on their users. Linguru depends on the users of the dictionaries. We need to know, therefore, where the people are coming from who come to Linguru. This will tell us where we might look to find new users.
<i>: italicsYou type: <i>foo</i>
You get: foo
<b>: boldfaceYou type: <b>foo</b>
You get: foo
<u>: underlinedYou type: <u>foo</u>
You get: foo
<em>: emphasis (Linguru style)You type: <em>foo</em>
You get: foo
<a href="...">: hyperlinkYou type: <a
href="http://www.foo.com">foo</a>
You get: foo
<ul> and <li>: bulleted
listYou type:
<ul><li>foo</li><li>bar</li></ul>
You get:
Another tag you might experiment with is <p>
for delimiting paragraphs. You can use this in place of
<br>. Note that <br> has no
corresponding closing tag </br>; you just type
<br> where you want to insert a carriage
return.
If using HTML tags is too intimidating, either submit your
description as text or create an HTML document elsewhere and paste
the source code into the description window on this form. Many word
processors allow you to convert a document into HTML. Many web
browsers have a utility which allows you to write a web page. For
instance, Netscape 6 calls this utility its composer; the
composer can be found under the "Tasks" menu. In Internet Explorer,
you click "Edit" on the toolbar. In Netscapes 4.x, the
composer is found under the "Communicator" menu. In Mozilla, the
basis for Netscape 6, a composer again can be found under the
"Tasks" menu. However you compose your personal web page, remember
that everything after the 2400th character will be ignored. Paste
into this form only that source code that lies between the
<body> tags. Everything else will be ignored
when your page is displayed, but it will count towards the 2400
character limit.