Hi all, I developed a PHP program (named WikiHiero) to convert text wrote according to the "Hieroglyphs coding manual" (international standard for typing hieroglyph text on computer) syntax into HTML tables using a set of image (no image generation like TeX).
I'd like to add this program into Wikimedia software that we can easily use hieroglyphs in Wikipedia, WikiSource and Wikitionary. We need a new tag (for example [[hiero:]]) then send to the WikiHiero program the text into that tags. This program create a string with HTML tags (<table> and <img>) we can print (echo) into the page during parsing.
[[hiero:w-i-k-i-p:d-i-a]] => echo WikiHiero("w-i-k-i-p:d-i-a");
I put a test version of WikiHiero at http://aoineko.free.fr. You can, for example, try to type w-i-k-i-p:d-i-a, your name, or what you want ;o) ('-' is for block separation and ':' for glyph superposition).
I personally planed to use it in Wikipedia, but there are many hieroglyph texts available we may add to WikiSource (if under a free licence).
The set of image contain about 1000 small PNG pictures for a total size of about 1 Mb. I didn't tune yet the program, but I think parsing time is inconsequential for small text (I avoid all file check by creating pre-calculate tables). I'm sure we can make many speed improvements, but I think this version is quick enough to be added to Wikimedia. Any advices to speed process are welcome.
I add an option to output hieroglyph as text (for text only browser) using the glyph phonemes. Ypu can test it on http://aoineko.free.fr by choosing the "Text only" mode. The better may be to add an option into preference (like TeX) to choose the render method.
The program is under GFDL (I didn't released source yet because I want to comment them first) and hieroglyphs pictures author authorized me to put them under GFDL.
Aoineko