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Changing terminology in WW?

Changing terminology in WW?

by Alasdair McAndrew -
Number of replies: 3
In WeBWorK, everything is done in terms of "Courses". But at my university, individual teaching subjects are called "Units". The term "Courses", to us, is what I believe I known as "Programs" elsewhere.

So can I easily adjust WW so that the word "Courses" is replaced by "Units" wherever it appears to students?

Thanks,
Alasdair
In reply to Alasdair McAndrew

Re: Changing terminology in WW?

by Michael Gage -
Alasdair,

I think you could do this using the "localization" feature of WeBWorK.  This is meant principally for language translation, but it could be used for this purpose. We already have  en_us and en_uk dictionaries -- this kind of thing could be expanded.  So I don't think this would be completely "easy" the first time at least but I would be curious to see if it would work for the purposes you describe.  

A place with some description for adding a new dictionary (it's easy)
http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/Localization

Let us know if something comes of this.

-- Mike
In reply to Michael Gage

Re: Changing terminology in WW?

by Alasdair McAndrew -
Thanks, Mike - I've had a look at the localization feature and this would work. In my case it's not so much a language issue as a terminology issue. I wonder if there might be some way of simply changing terminology in future versions of WW? This also might help internationalization, at least in the English-speaking world, where there's a huge range of names of things.

Thanks again,
Alasdair
In reply to Alasdair McAndrew

Re: Changing terminology in WW?

by Michael Gage -
Is there a reason to create a separate mechanism for changing terminology in addition to language? The term "localization" usually encompasses more than " just language -- it often includes measurement units, local dialects and so forth.  We could streamline documentation and make it clear that the dictionaries will change terminology as well, but unless there is a need I would be cautious about creating a new and separate mechanism for terminology.