LINGUIST List 13.235

Mon Jan 28 2002

All: New Site & Unicode--It's Good News, Not Bad!

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. linguist, We're Confident It Will Be Even Better

Dear Subscribers,


It appears from your response to our message announcing the new web
design that we have inadvertently implied that reading LINGUIST in the
future may be difficult, perhaps even impossible for some of you. We
apologize for that, and want to take this opportunity to assure you
that just the opposite is true. In fact, the changes we have made are
in an effort to include more people--those who use other scripts and
character sets. And we certainly do not intend to exclude those of you
with older browsers. Not only will we work with you to set your
browser so that it works with the site, we intend to put together a
low-graphics version for people with slower connections. Everyone
should still be able to access LINGUIST--in fact, MORE people should
be able to access LINGUIST conveniently when we're done. It might not
work flawlessly the first time though, so we ask that you be patient
with us while we work out the bugs. And, of course, the mail version
of LINGUIST will remain exactly the same as it has always been.

Some of you expressed the fear that using the new LINGUIST web site
will require no small amount of computer expertise. Nothing could be
further from the truth. In fact, the people working on this project
are not computer experts themselves, but students and professors of
linguistics, trying to put together as usable a site as they can,
often holding the "how-to" book in one hand while typing commands with
the other! As we have said before, this project has been a massive
undertaking; but we are pleased and excited with results. We are
confident that you will find the new LINGUIST site not only easier to
navigate, but more useful as well. 

In closing, as we complete the project and work out the bugs, we
solicit your feedback--your comments and suggestions, as well as any
problems you may run into. That way we will know what's working and
what isn't. We will continue to update you on our progress, and we
will do our best to keep the LINGUIST site running smoothly for all of
you.

And as always, we thank you for your patience and your support.


Best regards,

LINGUIST