Once this transition period is over, we will detail the changes in a separate post.

We apologize for the inconvenience, please contact us should you encounter further problems.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

The way this can be achieved is via OpenSearch, a standard that lets websites communicate their search capabilities to browsers (or other search clients).

You can install the WALS Language Search plugin in FireFox by visiting the WALS website and then clicking on the small arrow next to your browser’s search box. This will open a dropdown list looking like this:

Select Add “Search a Language in WALS” to install the plugin.

For more details about the data we exposed, visit the archive descriptions on OLAC for

• WALS language pages and
• WALS bibliographic data.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

It should be noted, though, that DOIs do not always point to Open Access content; it is also not generally possible, to link to particular pages of articles accessible via DOI. So we decided to only add the DOI links to the reference database pages and not to individual citations within WALS as we did with the Google Books links.

For an example of the new links, go to the record Agnew and Pike 1957.

So we decided to have a try linking where possible:

• From the language lists on feature pages:

  

• From the lists of feature values on language pages:

  

• From info bubbles on maps:

  

But since discovering the links was done automatically, there will be errors. So if you find references which are available on Google Books but not linked, or links to the wrong book, let us know.

We apologize for any inconvenience. Should you encounter problems after the planned downtime, please contact us.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

[Update: The network outage was caused by a broken fiber-network-cable.]

This can be considered a big step, since it means we can now show additional data for features provided as ground overlay. On the other hand it is only a first step, because there is not yet a mechanism to make this data available for combined features.

So chapter 141 is still a special case, as it is not available for combination, or even for advanced map configuration like choosing marker icons. But we’ll keep on working.

A solution for this problem may be to subscribe to more selective feeds for the blog. The feed URLs for single categories look like this http://blog.wals.info/category/category-name/feed, e.g. the feed for the “News” category is http://blog.wals.info/category/news/feed

If the rate at which new posts are created due to the new functionality increases notably, we may have to reconsider the current implementation, though. But at less than 10 new posts per day, we’ll keep it as it is, and apologize for any inconvenience.

• on language pages,
• in the dynamic language lists of feature values pages,
• in the info windows on feature maps.

As for the more general discussions, we use our blog for these comments. And because it would have been unpractical to create posts for all > 50000 datapoints in advance – and because we do not expect each and every value assignment to be disputable – the blog posts to anchor the discussions will be created on the fly. So report any problems you encounter with the “comment” buttons.

Unfortunately, all feed URLs have changed. We try to redirect to the appropriate new ones, but probably you will have to update any subscriptions you may have.

Since the easiest way to print WALS Online maps is via screenshots, we wanted to provide more flexibility in rearranging the screen layout of our maps. Now

• you can resize the big maps,
• drag the legend to any position on the screen,
• hide the legend.

We also added the functionality to display a list of languages for a certain set of values to all big maps. Clicking on the number of languages for a certain value in the legend will display this list above the map. Clicking on one of these languages will open the corresponding info window for the language marker on the map.

Notes:

• When resizing the map containers you may have to drag around the map a bit to stipulate loading of the missing map tiles to fill the container.
• Printing of the underlying Google Maps is subject to Google’s permission guidelines.

1. The genus Eastern Saharan has been renamed to Western Saharan.
2. The genus Lule-Vilela has been renamed to Lule.
3. The family Sko has been renamed to Skou and it’s genealogy rearranged:
   • The languages formerly listed under genus Eastern Sko are now listed as languages of the Serra Hills genus (Poko-Rawo, Womo).
   • The languages formerly listed under genus Serra Hills are now listed as languages of genus Western Skou (Dumo, Skou).
   • There is no genus “Eastern Sko(u)” anymore.
   • The language Sko has been renamed to Skou.

The URLs for the superseded genus and family names should redirect properly to the new ones.

Some time ago Hans-Jörg Bibiko made me aware of a nuisance in the way feature maps are drawn: The layering of icons was more or less random. So in a first step to remedy this, I made sure icons for the same value are drawn in the same layer and the layers are ordered by decreasing number of associated languages, so that icons for rare feature values will not be hidden. To make the layering completely configurable, the drawing order can now be changed by dragging-and-dropping values in a new control at the bottom of a feature’s values page (as shown in the screenshot from Feature 50).

Another functionality suggested by Hans-Jörg was a bigger map for language families. I implemented this map view as separate page which can be reached from the regular family page, and configured from there as well. As an example, look at the map for the Austro-Asiatic family.

For details about these changes see the complete changeset.

To most users the site’s HTML pages will be all the access to the data they care about, but for people who want to work with the data quantitatively a more comprehensive access to the data is necessary.

The Raw Power

For those wanting to unleash the raw power of SQL, we provide the WALS Online SQLite database – the one the web application runs on – for download.

The easiest way we found to work with this database is to use SQLite Manager, a Firefox browser add-on.

The screenshot below shows SQLite Manager with the WALS db loaded, and languages located north of the polar circle – i.e. with a latitude greater than 66.5° – selected.

Power to the Masses

Now SQL isn’t everyone’s first choice for manipulating data; Spreadsheet processors like ms excel or openoffice calc may come closer to that. So since last week, we also provide (most of) the WALS data in a ZIP archive of Delimiter-separated values for download.

Data formatted this way can be easily imported into spreadsheet processors, just make sure to pick the correct character encoding for your platform.

And to the Mapmakers

To include the feature data from WALS in maps, we provide also several exports, explained below in descending order of flexibility.

Single Feature Values as GeoRSS

As announced before, GeoRSS for single values of features are available using the following (somewhat bolted-on) URL syntax. To retrieve the feed for the first value of feature 2:

http://wals.info/feature/2?tg_format=georss

To retrieve other values, you must pass parameters to set the preceding values to “invisible”. So the URL below will give the feed for the third value:

http://wals.info/feature/2?tg_format=georss&v1=a000&v2=a000

GeoRSS is easy to include as layer on maps created with OpenLayers.

Complete Features as KML

With URLs like

http://wals.info/feature/2?tg_format=kml

you can export a feature’s datapoints in KML format, suitable for import in Google Earth.

Features as Mapplets

To add a WALS feature as overlay to a Google map, you can install the mapplet by following the “mapplet” link on the feature’s map page.

1. Errata in what we consider the original contribution of WALS, i.e. feature values assigned to languages;
2. Errata in the additional data we present, like bibliographic references, locations of languages, genealogical data, etc.

While errata of the first kind will be collected until a new edition of WALS Online is published (planned every year), errata of the second kind will be fixed right away. We will document these changes in this blog.

Last week we updated the locations of five languages: Cheyenne, Kamaiurá, Shambala, Trumai and Waurá. Find the details here.

Created with Wordle.