Clean theme - move readability report above or below text

[HaakonME]

Hello, and thank you for Readability! This is very useful!

I have a small problem, which you can see at

http://far.no/gnuru/course/view.php?id=10

if you like. I use the Clean theme to get responsive design and accessibility on phones, tablets and PC-ies with different screen dimensions.

The Readability result is located and stuck on the right side, which does not work well with the reflow. You will not see the problem if you have a large screen, but if you use a netbook, a tablet or smartphone, you will easily see it.

If the calculated result is moved above or below the text, this problem will be gone - thank you.

[matbury]

Hi Haakon,

Thanks for the feedback. I visited the link and looked at a few pages. I didn't see the readability filter output anywhere. Can you provide a screenshot of what you mean?

Thanks

[HaakonME]

Yes, later today. I am giving a presentation about Moodle in 20 minutes and had to turn it off.

[HaakonME]

[HaakonME]

I hope the screenshots make it clear what the problem is. Do you think this is something you can fix by moving the readability score above or below the text, please? :-)

[matbury]

Thanks for the screen shots; it's a great help. Yes, I can see the problem.

I can include a global parameter to position the box; inline, tl, tr, etc. but it'd probably be better to try to detect the user agent and adjust it automatically according to that. I'll have to find out how Moodle does that.

BTW, it seems strange that it's putting the analysis in such short texts. Have you adjusted the minimum text length on the filter's settings page?

[HaakonME]

Great - looking forward to it! :-)

I do not think I changed anything, but I checked it and found the minimum at 500 - is that correct?

Another thing, on your blog there was an image showing more than one statistic, is that still in there?

[matbury]

Admins can select which scale to use site-wide from 6 options.

I'm thinking of making the label simply "Readability: ..." in all cases and then the link title shows which algorithm's being used, e.g. "Flesch-Kincade | What's this?", or "Gunning-Fog | What's this?".

I think I should set the default minimum text length to a longer value. 500 characters is too short.

[matbury]

I want to make the readability rating as unintrusive as possible but easily accessible. Any ideas?

[HaakonME]

I tried all of them, and ended up at Flesch-Kincade Grade Level, because suggesting how many years of systematic reading training the reader needs to comprehend the text you have written or uploaded is important to convey to the text provider, to give a hint about if you have or have not provided a text suitable for your audience. I think of it as check - did you think before you provided?

I found that I thought better and rewrote difficult parts of my own material for adults, i.e. I assume adults should be able to comprehend, and so I do not try hard enough to make things easy. When I write for children, I take more care - the test shows that I do. I can be a bit stupid sometimes, and I know I am not alone in this.

I have had people argue back about readability of their own material, claiming "lack of precision" if they change anything, when their sentences are three or four machine typed lines long and every word is multi-syllable. The tests are not straight-jackets, if you need to write "congruent triangles" to be precise - do it.

If moving the readability indicator above or below the text is not enough, I think "Readability: easy/challenging/difficult" is better than a score and a method name - these could be available in a mouse over with link. However, "easy" for who? Easy in the 8th grade or the 1st grade? All in all, "Grade level: years" is perhaps the one that most accurately indicates to the text provider what they are about to do?

[matbury]

Hi Haakon, I've just updated it. The readability now displays as inline text at the end of the text body. I've taken out all the divs and formatting except the background colour, the links, and the link titles. Please let me know what you think.

[HaakonME]

I have installed it, and I do believe the orange frame around it would be better, it looks too much like a link now, rather than a report. At present, the link goes to the wrong article.

[matbury]

I've fixed the link issue (The links were correct but the link title was wrong). The link colour and some other attributes depend on the Moodle theme that is being used so the appearance will be different with different themes. I haven't specified any borders, underline, or padding. It's about as simple as it can get: link + background colour. I think there's always going to be a compromise between how dominant the readability display is, i.e. How strongly we define alignment, borders, padding, etc., and how it fits in with other text and items on the page, especially on small screens.

[HaakonME]

Thank you for moving the report below - this helps on the phone! :-) Is it possible to make it less like a regular link? :-)

[matbury]

Re: "Is it possible to make it less like a regular link? :-)" -- That's what I intended with the grey background. What do you suggest?

[HaakonME]

Grey background? Ops, did not catch the update, sorry! Hang on, I will fix my end.

[HaakonME]

Maybe I need a trip to the optician? ;-) The grey was a bit too subtle on my screen, perhaps different contrast settings. A bit darker grey or a slightly larger grey frame, perhaps?

[HaakonME]

Change background color from EEE to DDD, border-radius to 3px to get rounded corners - http://www.css3.info/preview/rounded-border/ . How can I contribute a Norwegian translation? :-)

[matbury]

I've darkened the background to #DDD and set the padding to 3px. Many of the Moodle themes I've seen have square corners on boxes and borders so I think I'll leave out the rounded corner part. I've pushed the changes to the repo so you can try them whenever you're ready.

[matbury]

Re: Norwegian translation, the language strings are here: https://github.com/matbury/filter_readability/blob/master/readability/lang/en/filter_readability.php If they make sense to you, you could post the translations here and I'll create a Norwegian language file.

[HaakonME]

<?php

// This file is part of Moodle - http://moodle.org/ // // Moodle is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify // it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by // the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or // (at your option) any later version. // // Moodle is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, // but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of // MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the // GNU General Public License for more details. // // You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License // along with Moodle. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

/**

• Strings for component 'filter_emailprotect', language 'en', branch 'MOODLE_20_STABLE' *
• @package filter_readability
• @copyright 2013 Matt Bury matt@matbury.com {@link http://matbury.com}
• @license http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU GPL v3 or later
• Translation Norwegian bokmål Haakon Meland Eriksen haakon.eriksen@far.no */

$string['filtername'] = 'Lesevennlighet'; $string['type'] = 'Type'; $string['type_description'] = 'Type formel for å kalkulere lesevennlighet.'; $string['min_length'] = 'Minimum lengde'; $string['min_length_description'] = 'Minimum lengde (antall tegn, inkludert mellomrom og tegnsetting) som en tekst må ha før statistikk om lesevennlighet kalkuleres.'; // $string['fkre'] = 'Flesch-Kincaid lesevennlighet'; $string['fkre_link'] = 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_tests'; $string['fkgl'] = 'Flesch-Kincaid trinn - avgangsår'; $string['fkgl_link'] = 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_tests'; $string['gfi'] = 'Gunning-Fog indeks'; $string['gfi_link'] = 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunning_fog_index'; $string['cli'] = 'Coleman-Liau indeks'; $string['cli_link'] = 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleman-Liau_Index'; $string['smogi'] = 'SMOG indeks'; $string['smogi_link'] = 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMOG'; $string['ari'] = 'Automated Readability indeks'; $string['ari_link'] = 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_Readability_Index'; $string['whats_this'] = 'Lesevennlighet antydes basert på anerkjente formler om god ord- og setningslengde i forhold til hele teksten. God struktur, sammenheng, tematisk ordnet innhold, variert lengde på setninger og ord bidrar sammen til en lesevennlig tekst.';

[HaakonME]

Thanks, I have now tried the update - colour and links are now fine! :-) Padding 3px results in scrollbars, so I used the inspector and tried 2px and scrollbars disappeared.

[matbury]

Changed padding to 2px and included the Norwegian lang file. Just to check, the lang code for Norwegian is 'no' isn't it?

[HaakonME]

Great! :-)

Apparently it is still 'no' for Norwegian bokmål in Moodle 2.6.1, rather than 'nb', which is strange. nb-NO, nn-NO and se-NO are all relevant ISO language codes in Norway, but I am not an expert on these things - it seems a little dated in 2014 using just 'no' for Norwegian bokmål, http://www.lingoes.net/en/translator/langcode.htm.

I wrote a different text in Norwegian for the "What's this?", trying to explain that the indicator suggests readability according to well known calculation formulas, and used together with structure, coherence, thematically sorted content and variable word and sentence lengths will help make the provided text more readable.

Here is an update

$string['whats_this'] = 'Indikatoren antyder lesevennlighet basert på anerkjente kalkulasjonsformler, og brukt sammen med god struktur, sammenheng, tematisk ordnet innhold, samt variert lengde på setninger og ord så kan den bidra til å gi en mer lesevennlig tekst. Følg lenken for å lære mer om dette.';

I have tried to translate it into English

$string['whats_this'] = 'The indicator suggests readability according to well known calculation formulas, and used together with structure, coherence, thematically sorted content and variable word and sentence lengths it can be used to provide a more readable text. Follow the link to learn more about this.';

[matbury]

The 'whats_this' string goes into the link title and is difficult to read at the best of times (The titles might run off the screen on some OS' and/or browsers). I think it's best to keep it as short as possible and link to the details/explanation.

Are there any explanations of readability formulas in Norwegian that we could link to, instead of the English Wikipedia.org ones? I see that there aren't any Norwegian Wikipedia pages on the topic.

[HaakonME]

Yes, no problem. It is better that it works, and I suppose I can find another way to convey that the score is an indicator and not "THE TRUTH". :-)

I have asked an old friend about a similar question - are these formulas even valid for Norwegian or should some of the values or English language assumptions be tuned first? From personal testing, I think Flesch-Kinkaid is okay, but what about formulas that rely on the presence or absence of common English words? He is a professor in these things, so if anyone knows it is him. :-) For now, I think it is okay to link to the English articles.

[matbury]

Hi Haakon, none of the algorithms used in this plugin use world lists or lookup tables. They purely analyse word length and sentence length. They rely on the hypothesis that the more commonly used words in languages tend to get shortened over time (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_common_words_in_English), so they're easier to say and write, and less frequently used words tend to be more descriptive in their morphology, so they're easier to remember and understand, and therefore longer. (I can't remember the name of the guy who came up with it though!)

I'd think this would apply to most Latin, Cyrillic, etc. script languages where pronunciation length is reflected in word length. At a guess, I'd say it applies to Norwegian but I think it's worth checking to be sure.