The Glossary is starting up

So why do I boast that the Glossary makes IndiCS.InfO really special? Because it's thoroughly integrated into the whole site and has a two-way interaction with it. Now, while the site is still young, this does not look too striking. Nor will it ever, really, it will just feel natural and be just the way it has to be. As both the other articles and the glossary entries grow in number, this interwoven network will spread exponentially.

From the one side, that of all other articles, Indian names and terms will be referenced to the glossary. As more and more glossary entries appear every day, you'll notice that in articles you red before a couple of terms change in appearance. From plain black text (e.g. Ganesha) they go blue, with a dotted underline (e.g. Ganesha). This means they have a live glossary reference. Just hover your cursor over one of these and you'll get a tooltip with a short explanation of the word or name. Click on it, and you'll be taken to the glossary page.

From the other side, that of the actual glossary articles, there's also interaction. The glossary looks all over the site and sucks up every article that is related to the glossary heading. So as the number of articles and pictures that mention our friend Ganesha grows, so will the glossary page, from where you can access all those articles and pictures. And the same for all other article entries. The glossaries also look around other glossaries, and harvest synonyms, so that important names like Ganesha will have an ever-growing list of synonyms.

But apart from this, the glossaries will be useful in themselves to anyone interested in Indian names and terminology. The thing is, the set of sounds (or phonemes) in the English language is rather different from that of most Indian languages, and a substantial amount of pronunciation information is lost when a word from one of these languages is transcribed to English. If you want to know how an Indian word is really spelt in the language it comes from (and how to pronounce that), then the IndiCS.InfO Glossary is your friend.

So stay tuned and watch the Glossary grow. In a short while various help pages will be available to aid you in using it better.