LANGUAGE TUTOR LIST OF COMMANDS
-------------------------------
# Please note that after typing the command letter(s), press the [enter]
# key. A delay of between 1 and 6 seconds will be experienced the
# first time that you play a word. Sorry about that.
# Thanks for your patronage.

w ..... plays the sound file of the next word.
x ..... translates the word most recently played into
English. It does this by redirecting you
to a new web page (http://www.wordreference.com)
which contains the translation of the
word. Press the 'Back' button on your Web Browser
to continue practising. Requires a current internet
connection.
v ..... displays the untranslated text of the word
most recently played.
a ..... plays the word most recently heard again
u ..... display all words loaded
zzz ... clears the message area of all previous responses.
load .. loads the sound urls which the user (you)
has entered (or cut and paste) in the 'url data'
text area (the one below the message area)
empty . empties the contents of the url data box, so that
you can cut and paste your own urls in, if you
want to.
random. Sets the current 'play mode' to random, meaning that the
next each word played by the program is randomly selected
from the current lesson
sequential
Set the current 'play mode' to sequential, meaning that
each word in the current lesson will be played one after
the other.
? ..... displays this help message
??..... displays information about in what browsers this
program has been tested



Many Thanks to:
. http://developer.irt.org
For very good javascript code
. http://spanish.allinfo-about.com/
For good spanish wav sound files
. http://www.wordreference.com/
Really good translations of words.

TESTING:
Netscape 4.61 on MS-Win2000
WORKING for lts.html but not ltf.html
. ltf.html gives an error 'your disk cache is probably too small'
thanks netscape
. (css) background colours of form elements not rendered
. returning false doesnt stop form submit
. doesn't recognise
only

. when trying to play an audio file with code below
get error message...
navigator.mimeTypes["audio/x-wav"].enabledPlugin
has no properties
This is because the plugin is not plugged in.

. Using a hard coded embed, the browser attempts to
contact the netscape site to download an audio
plugin but cant find it because The Netscape site doesn't
have it any more ('LiveAudio')
. Have just spent an entire night (almost) trying to get
NS 4.61 to play a sound. After finding the "LiveAudio"
plugin filename = npaudio.dll - dont bother searching on
the netscape site, you wont find it there, loading it etc
The sound file would play from the default console in the
web page but wont play programatically with the following
code (which everybody on the internet is in agreement,
should work.

[embed name = "embedtest"
width = "144" src = "estudiante.wav" loop=false
autostart = "false" hidden = "false" MASTERSOUND]
[form]
[input type = "button"
onclick = "document.embeds[1].play(LOOP=1);"]
[/form]

The solution to all this is to open another window
and pass the url of the sound file to play as
a query string. This works. Also use the
so that the sound file plays as soon as the window opens.
Once one window is open, netscape seems to use that same
window for all following plays (which is good)

TESTING:
Netscape 4.61 on MS-Win98
. PROBABLY SHOULD WORK
. All functions appear to work, no errors being generated
but havent been able to check that sound files are actually
being played.

TESTING:
IE 6.0 on MS-Win2000

The sound files would then take about 2 seconds (ADSL) for each to
play after the 'w' command was given. But once that
particular word (sound) had been played once, it would be
played instantly from then on.
On a modem connection each file takes about 5 seconds to
play (this is probably to slow to be usefull)

When the sound files were attempted to be preloaded with the
'soundObject.src = http://some.url' code there was still
a delay of approximately two seconds (ADSL) before each sound file
was played. In other words attempting to preload the
sounds with the code above was not usefull.
. All functions appeared to work.

A version of the program which had urls without the http://
prefix on the urls did not play any sound.

IE 5.0 on MS-Win2000
. Sounds files play, commands work
. IE 5 seems to support the embedds array
and actually played a sound that is embedded
. Cant seem to preload sound files with bgSound.src or
with [embed] tags
When no intenet connection is available IE 5.0 is
still able to find the sound files (from a previous
internet session) in the temporary internet
files folder, but only when the the sound files
are refered to by exactly the same
url as that which was used to download them .
(including the protocol string)

IE 4.7 on MS-Win98
. Seems to support the <bgsound> tag but havent actually
heard sounds (because my sound card needs a driver)
. All functions working but havent heard any sound yet.
. Browser trivia.!! Do not use value = "" in the tag
of a <textarea> because it stops IE 4.7 from displaying
anything generated by javascript in the text area.
No matter how much stuff you write to the textarea using
something like
document.someForm.someTextArea.value = "blah"
IE 4.7 (on MS-Win98) wont display it.

To do:
. Perhaps divide words into categories to allow
for special interest learning. (eg family, foods, buying-things ...)
These categories would be overlapping sets, that
is the same word could be in more than one category.
. Categorize words according to my own arbitrary ideas
of what is important (e.g conversational ...)
. Stop Form from submitting with the enter key
FIXED for IE 5.0 on MS-Win2000 (dec02)