Skip to content

docs: 'Creating Custom Alphabets' guide teaches the v5 format — needs a v6 rewrite #41

Open

Description

@willwade

Problem

docs/languages/creating-alphabets.md documents the v5 alphabet format:

  • <group label="..."> + <char d="a" /> — v6 uses <group name="..."> + <node label="a"><textCharAction/></node> (the v5 <s d="" t=""> element still parses but is legacy)
  • No mention of the v6 root attributes that matter: orientation (LR/RL/TB/BT), trainingFilename, colorsName, conversionMode
  • No mention of the naming convention (alphabet.<name>.xml) or where the file goes on each v6 frontend (GTK: ~/.local/share/dasher/alphabets/ — see the updated downloads page)
  • No pointer to Data/alphabets/ConvertAlphabet.py for v5→v6 conversion
  • New for v6: adding an alphabet should regenerate alphabet_index.json (Scripts/generate-alphabet-index.py in DasherCore) so the catalogue page and metadata stay current — the guide should mention it

What good looks like

  1. A minimal working v6 example (comment the structure)
  2. Attributes reference (name, orientation, trainingFilename, colorsName, conversionMode)
  3. Groups and nodes; textCharAction; control actions
  4. Training text: how to provide trainingFilename, size guidance (300K+), where it goes
  5. Testing it: drop in the user dir, restart, select in Settings
  6. Contributing it upstream: file layout, regeneration of the index

Context: with v6 shipping all 474 alphabets built in (website PR #40), this guide's audience is people adding genuinely new languages or custom symbol sets — worth making correct.

Activity

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

      Milestone

      No milestone

      Relationships

      None yet

      Development

      No branches or pull requests

      Issue actions