===================== The Tankhuma text study web app a final project for Prof. Nechemiah Polen's course in Hebrew College's Masters of Arts in Jewish Studies by Andrew Michael Ash ===================== Q: What does this app do? A: It's a prototype UX for reading a bilingual (hebrew/english) text, and viewing grammatical details about any word in that text. Q: When did you build it? A: In the fall of 2010. The first Ruby on Rails app I built, I began with the book "Ruby on Rails 2 Tutorial", essentially implementing the entire app described in that book, then customized it extensively to suit this purpose. I was also responsible for all of the textual work - the translations & correctly inputing the Hebrew text. --(from my original email documenting this project)---------------------------- FROM: Andrew Michael Ash DATE: ~ Oct 21, 2010 SUBJECT: Andrew's Tankhuma text study web app (for your review) BODY: Dear Rabbi Nechemiah Polen, I would love to schedule some time to meet with you in person to review the assignment. I'll try to provide a brief explanation of my goals and how the software works in this e-mail, but I'm sure I could give you a much better sense in person by giving you a demo. Hours devoted to this project This presentation, including research time spent analyzing the text with BDB, Frank, & Jastrow, and writing the software program, took about 25-30 hours. Areas of the Web Application to Examine (1) Navigate to http://http://warm-moon-8791.heroku.com/tankhuma It may appear to be a simple website with Hebrew & English actually it's all powered by a database that I designed & created to store information about hebrew texts and translations. - Each word in the original Hebrew is analyzed in this table: http://http://warm-moon-8791.heroku.com/words - The table itself looks at first like a large spreadsheet because that's a familiar design for such things, but in fact if you try clicking "Add Word" you'll see a structured way of entering information about each new verb. For example, it knows to ask for the form, binyan, pgn, etc. of a verb and gives you a list of all the valid types of binyanim to choose from. You can also edit an existing word, delete a word (but this would alter the text), or view a word with all its related info. - Under the "Meanings" column in this table I've included comments in the form of Translator's Notes. Some talk about the deeper meaning of the text. I would certainly like to have written more of these comments. (2) The main page looks like this: http://http://warm-moon-8791.heroku.com/tankhuma It takes each of the Hebrew words entered through the form in (1) and structures them into the fluid Hebrew text you see presented on the screen. - Try clicking any word in the Hebrew text. You'll see that it gets added to the "Word Watch" floating pane. This is intended to help a student/teacher compare the syntax of particular words. It works a little like a shopping cart - simply click on whichever words you'd like to see analyzed and then you can compare them. Very useful when comparing verbs, for example, or really for a newer student. As you scroll down the page the pane scrolls with you. - Click the "(clear)" links to clear out the entire "Word Watch" pane, or just one word. This does not delete the word from my translation (which I have backed up), on the contrary, it just takes it away from your "shopping cart" like "Word Watch" pane. - A fluid translation is offered in english on this page. This translation is based off all my research as seen in (1). (3) Quotations from Tanakh [i.e. the Jewish Bible] are source-checked to explain the context before & after each quotation: http://http://warm-moon-8791.heroku.com/quotes That's all for now. I hope you find this to be an interesting presentation! If the presentation inspires in you any ideas for how technology tools (like the one I built here) could enhance the Jewish learning experience I'd love to listen to your insights.