Miskito/How

Simple, practical instructions or check lists for basic tasks.

Start a new page
If you are starting a new page in the course, please follow these steps before doing anything else. Details on how to carry out each step is given in the subsections below.


 * 1) Please list yourself as on the Authors and contributors page (unless you already have).
 * 2) Register the page on the New page log (located on the Project History page).
 * 3) Place the page in the Table of contents page (unless it's already there).
 * 4) Open/create the new page, and place standard navigation links, course logo and page title at the top using the Template:Miskito_title template (you will need to set its parameters).

What you need to decide in order to begin
Decide the following first:
 * the page's name: This is the name used by the system, and will consist of Miskito/ followed by one or more words, e.g. Miskito/Lesson 34, Miskito/Links, Miskito/Grammar notes.
 * the page's title: This is the heading appearing at the top of the page (with the course logo) and also in the table of contents and on some other pages, e.g. the title of the Miskito/Links page is Miskito links and bibliography, and that of Miskito/Lesson 1 is Nini Mary sa.
 * the page's position in the course's page sequence and the table of contents (i.e. between which two existing pages you will place the new page).

Once you have decided these three things, you are ready to do the following.

Register the page on the new page log
Go to New page log, open the edit window of the section, scroll down to the bottom of the list and add a new line with the new page's data, following the instructions given on that page. This will create an entry looking like this:
 * If the new page's name is Miskito/AAA and its title will be BBB, then register the page by writing the following line at the bottom of the list:

(Note: If you find this confusing, you may find it easier to use the preceding entry on the page as a model and just replace the data as necessary.)

You can now open the new page by clicking on the link your entry has created. However, before doing that, please add the page to the course's table of contents first so that readers can see it is there...

Place the page in the table of contents
(If the page you are creating is already listed in the table of contents, skip this step.)

Open the course's Table of contents and after studying the course's organisation (if you haven't already done this), decide where the new page will go. Now edit the entry for the new page into appropriate section of the table of contents. To do this: This will create an entry on the table of contents page looking like this: This will automatically generate the following entry:
 * If the new page is not a lesson, and if as before the new page's name is Miskito/AAA and its title will be BBB, then write the following line at the relevant position in the list of chapters:
 * If the new page is not a numbered lesson, supposing the new lesson is Lesson N (where N is a number), the title (a Miskito sentence) is BBB, and the English translation of the title is CCC, then insert the following line at the relevant position in the list of lessons:

(Note: If you find this confusing, you may find it easier to use the preceding entry on the page as a model and just replace the data as necessary.)

Create the page
The result at the top of the new page will look like this:
 * Click on either of the two links your entries have already generated (in the table of contents or the new page log) to open up an editing window for the new page.
 * Insert standard navigation links, the course logo and the page's title at the top of the page. This is much easier than it sounds...
 * If it is not a lesson and the page's title is BBB, and the names of the preceding and following chapters' pages are Miskito/XXX and Miskito/YYY respectively, then just write the following at the top of the new page:

which will generate the following:
 * If it is a lesson, then suppose the number of the lesson is N, BBB is its Miskito title and CCC its English translation, M is the preceding lesson number and O the following lesson number. Then you write this at the top of the page:

(Note: If you find this confusing, you may find it easier to open another page (a chapter of a lesson as the case may be) and taking its top line as a model, just replace the data as necessary.)
 * Now save the page, and you are ready to open it again and start placing some content there.

Write a point
A standard lesson consists of several "points" followed by a vocabulary and review activity. Each point consists of model sentences, commentary and a practice exercise. For details on these elements, please read other pages such as Lesson Structure and the Layout Guide.

Here is a dummy "point" which you may wish to copy and use as a starter when writing up each point in a lesson. To use this, open up the section (DUMMY POINT) in edit mode (click on the Edit link on the right), copy everything in the edit window, then paste it into your lesson page. Flesh out the content, putting your material in place of the items IN CAPITAL LETTERS. Where there are three of something, you can have any number you like of them.

Write a vocabulary/review section
Again, other pages give details on how to write this section. Here is a dummy section to help in writing up lessons. To use it, open up the section ("Vocabulary and review") in edit mode (click on the Edit link on the right), copy everything in the edit window, then paste it into your lesson page. Flesh out the content, putting your material in place of the items IN CAPITAL LETTERS. Where there are three of something, you can have any number you like of them, of course.

Once you have decided on the full content of the lesson's vocabulary, you should incorporate it into the general vocabulary page. While this is not an automatic process, it is quite easy and some of the steps can be performed semi-automatically, i.e. using computer tools to make it easier. The steps are as follows:
 * 1) Open the word list page (NOT the general vocabulary page just mentioned, which should not be edited directly). This is where the complete vocabulary is stored in alphabetic order; open its editing window.
 * 2) Copy and paste the entire existing contents of the editing window (Ctrl-A) to a Microsoft Word file (or any other programme capable of alphabetically sorting a list). There's no need to save the file, just keep the window open.
 * 3) Now open in another window the new vocabulary section you are incorporating, again in edit mode, and copy and paste the list of vocabulary items there appending it at the end of (or anywhere else you like, actually) the word document you have temporarily created. (Note: you may take the column-separator lines as well if you like: (" | width=33% valign="top"| "). If so, no problem, just delete them again after you do the sort.)
 * 4) Now select the whole list in your word processor page and sort it alphabetically. (On my computer this is done from the Table menu, even though there's no need to make a table for it to work!) If the column separators are there, delete them now.
 * 5) Copy and paste the whole page back into the editing window of the course's general word list window, replacing the previous version of the list, and save.