Appeal to techies - simple program needed!

[Taffy]

I'm hoping someone can help out with this as I have absolutely no knowledge of programming. I need a program (web-based?) to convert Tonally Orthographic Pinyin to tone-marked pinyin and vice-versa. I imagine it wouldn't be very difficult for someone with the relevant skills and I am very happy to provide a list of all the equivalents in both standard Hanyu Pinyin and TOP.

Ex: tā hěn

[ironlady]

He has the download link for this .php script; I've downloaded it, and maybe I can modify it, but it would certainly be faster for someone who actually knew what s/he was doing to do the modifications. It seems to be a simple search and replace going on, and that's something I should be able to handle maybe later this weekend or next week if I get out from under this pile of work.

Anyone?
It's just a matter of controlling the case of the output based on the Hanyu Pinyin tone mark or number (let's go with numbers at present, that's easier).
Heck, we could add a color-coding option while we're at it, if it's for output on a Web page...

Anyone?

[ironlady]

Actually (darn you, now you've got me thinking about how to script this function rather than getting my work done!! ), it should be easy to write a pinyin-with-tone-numbers to TOP script, becuase .php comes with automatic functions to uppercase the whole string, just the first character, etc.
Give me a couple of days (but, experts, PLEASE feel free to script this faster and better...)

[hypermegaglobal]

Is this working correctly: http://www.hypermegaglobal.net/TOP/input.htm ?

[ironlady]

wow!!!!!!

Only two things: the tone number 5 (some people use it for neutral tone) remains after the * is added to denote neutral tone, and the second tone in TOP is last letter capitalized ,all others small (right now it's first small, others cap).

Can you share the source? I'd love to learn just how you did that (and so fast!!!) (I'm just learning basic .php for my own and my husband's Web sites, so most of what I do is read, imitate and modify.)

[hypermegaglobal]

wow!!!!!!

Thanks!

Only two things: the tone number 5 (some people use it for neutral tone) remains after the * is added to denote neutral tone, and the second tone in TOP is last letter capitalized ,all others small (right now it's first small, others cap).

I think I fixed this now.

Can you share the source? I'd love to learn just how you did that (and so fast!!!)

Of course! This should be downloadable (is that a word?):
http://www.hypermegaglobal.net/TOP/input.htm.txt
http://www.hypermegaglobal.net/TOP/makeTOP.php.txt

(I'm just learning basic .php for my own and my husband's Web sites, so most of what I do is read, imitate and modify.)

This sounds very efficient, but isn't the best thing about programming that you're free to find your own solution and implement it? I must warn you, once you've seen my apporach, you can't unsee it. It's so terribly simple!

Please have a good look at the very beginning of function NumberedToTOP where I define the arrays. Due to my puny knowledge of Chinese, there might be some mistakes or superfluous entries.

Furthermore, it's probably more user-friendly to have the form call itself (the result of the conversion would be shown on the same page as the input field).

Finally, as an alternative to computing $AllSyllablesAndTones every time the time the function is called, you could also output it in a way that matches PHP's array defining syntax ("ba"=>"ba*","ba1"=>"BA", etc.) and then simply define the array instead of computing it. Then you could tell people you spent a year writing the list of equivalents by hand.

Any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

[Taffy]

HMG, you are a

Thank you, thank you.

As already stated above, I know absolutely nothing about programming in any form. I had a look at the source code and it's all Greek to me. However, in the fields at the beginning, a couple of things could do with being adjusted:

'

[ironlady]

Fabulous!!!

I can't wait to dissect your code and learn about arrays...that's something I haven't yet touched in .php, but probably a very useful thing to know about!

How do you want to handle this -- I can put the script up on my own Web site and give you a credit/link, or do you want to continue to have exclusive hosting rights to this (which will, given the hordes of people who love TOP, undoubtedly drive your traffic through the roof...)?

[hypermegaglobal]

Thank you, thank you, so much praise (also by PM), I'm not used to this!

Taifeitang, I'll modify the script later, thanks for the corrections and the beer/chocolate/pizza-offer!

Ironlady, you can just take the script and put it on your website or link to my site, whatever you want. I'll probably move the script to a more meaningful domain if I find the time this evening.

Anyhow, we still have to integrate the other romanization systems! Any good websites out there with lists of equivalents (sorry, I only know bopomofo myself)?

[hypermegaglobal]

OK, I uploaded the version with TFT's correction and also found this table:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin_table

So, the "initial+final+er combinations" are still missing, right? Or are they only needed for people speaking with Beijing accent?