The purpose of ubernyms is to allow you configure a set of frequently used abbreviations that will be automatically encoded nicely whenever you use them. The goal is to make them visible in a way that is literate for both humans and computers. In other words: we tag them appropriately for your computer, and expand them as necessary for humans.
The main use for ubernyms is still going to be abbreviations, including acronyms. But you can also use it for other things like:
- Words that you always want linked. For instance, the links to ubernyms are being added by the plugin.
- Short forms of words or phrases or even entire paragraphs that you frequently have to type. The whole text can be placed to replace a single word.
- Pictures or emoticons you use frequently. I have photos show up in my DomTT tool-tips for my kid’s names: Katrina and Mikayla.
Edit: May 6, 2006
I’ve included a full configuration panel this time. No more hacking the plugin source to add abbreviations! Each time you go to the configuration panel there’s 5 empty slots for new definitions, and when you submit those, you get space for 5 more. You can remove definitions by simply deleting their Text or Definition. You can see a partial screenshot of the ubernyms configuration if you’re interested, but there’s not much to see besides long lists of definitions.
There’s a setting for each ubernym that lets you define if it is an acronym, an initialism, just a plain old abbreviation, or simply a replacement or link. And if you’re using the DomTT tool-tips, you can specify additional text (including HTML) to be placed below the main definition.
You can download the zip here, which includes the DomTT script which you can also get here with more details about how to use it and the many features, in case you want to play with the tool-tips. The installation is pretty simple, just unzip, and upload the whole ubernyms folder into your plugins folder.
Edit: May 7, 2006
Note that there’s now an option in the plugin configuration for including the default ubernym CSS, but you can feel free to copy that into your CSS and/or edit it as you see fit.
Edit: May 9, 2006
Incidentally, putting the photos in (as I did with my daughters) is extremely simple a?? without getting into the details of how I actually do it, all you have to do is put the img tag into the Description field, and make sure that you’ve checked the option for using the DomTT tooltips. You can use pretty much any HTML in the descriptions for DomTT, within reason . Of course, the images have to be somewhere. You can just upload them to your webhost and link to them there, or just specify an image you already uploaded to flickr. Remember, just put the HTML in, like: <img src="http://static.flickr.com/48/136555658_f0eaa892a9_m.jpg" alt="Sitting in a field of flowers" />
Edit: May 11, 2006
I’ve just released an update of this, no major changes, but it’s now in sync with my HuddledParser plugin so that if you’re using them both, you don’t accidentally get two copies of the DomTT scripts loaded. Aren’t I clever?
Edit: May 13, 2006
I finally fixed a few annoying bugs related to having quotes, single-quotes, and apostrophes in your abbreviations and released ubernym 2.4
Edit: May 14, 2006
I tweaked the javascript and css so that it all validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional, XHTML 1.0 Strict, or even XHTML 1.1, but the DomTT javascript still uses a CSS file with those neat rounded-corners and alpha-blending opacity, so it’s CSS won’t validate … which doesn’t really bother me.
Edit July 24, 2006
Here’s a list of things that I still want to do:
- I have in mind to provide a check-box-like way of configuring where the replacements happen. That is: to create a sub-tab in the configuration with a list of most/all the “filter“able portions of WordPress, so people can easily choose NOT to have Ubernyms run on comments (usually that’s not helpful, imho, even though that’s the way I run it on my site right now), or choose to run it on the category list, or whatever … I haven’t looked, but there ought to be a way to get a list from WordPress of all the registered filterable things (since it’s trivial, for instance, to add a filter to my RSS plugin … what if I wanted to run Ubernyms on my RSS output?)
- I still need to investigate the language problems. There seems to be something wrong with the way WordPress is handling foreign-language characters through the option settings table?
- To make this more generic, it would be cool to be able to “create” new “types” of replacements. E.g. Shanta Rohse wants to use it to create links to a glossary, but still use it for other things too, so would like a “glossary term” category. Maybe there could also be an additional setting like the “english” one that allows auto-linking only the first occurrence as per these requests
- It might be interesting to add another feature (as a seperate tab?) specifically to create photo popups. I’m not 100% sure how this would best work … (would there be a way to upload photos, or an AJAX interface to let you select photos from Flickr or Zooomr, or a simple ‘preview’ feature and just a text box where you type the URL to an image). The idea is basically to have the tool create the sort of tooltips I have on my kids names, but without needing to type html into that teeny edit box.
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Hi JayKul, I installed your plugin, and I’ve seen some words are getting abbrevated, Really a nice plugin, can you tell me how to add new abbrevations into it
Pretty neat — especially liking the DomTT tooltips stuff. without downloading and trying it out: do you have the acronyms wrapped in some delimiters. i.e., instead of replacing blind text, you look for [tag] or {tag} or something? For speed, it obviously significantly improves the ability of regex processing of a big block of text if you can ‘pre-parse’ for some sub-elements, then walk those one at a time (versus the equivalent, walking each word of the entire content block…).
Just wondering. I’ve seen some text-replacement plugins that bring sites to a crawl, trying to help improve them all..
-d
[...] Ubernyms WP Plugin: the ultimate text-replacement plugin ‘configure a set of frequently used abbreviations that will be automatically encoded nicely whenever you use them. The goal is to make them visible in a way that is literate for both humans and computers.’ (tags: wp-plugins wordPress) [...]
I finally found out how to add new abbrivation. It was so simple
Thilak: Gotta love plugins with user interfaces, eh?
David: That would break the plugin, in my opinion. The purpose is to make it simple and forgettable. I write about technology a lot, and that means a lot of abbreviations and acronyms. I don’t want to have to manually explain every acronym I write; in fact, I don’t want to even think about it. That’s the purpose here: I don’t have to think about it when I’m writing, I use an acronym the way I would in normal conversation and it automatically shows up in such a way that you can understand it.
Hello
I just installed this – it’s working. It seems better than the acronym plugins that I have used it the past. Much more user friendly. Great work and I send you kudos and thanks.
I am curious to know how to get the photos to appear (like your children’s photos). I am aware it’s a script but I’m not sure what I am suppose to call and where. I looked at the ‘howto’ to the domtooltip page but it didn’t help me much. I don’t know where I am suppose to upload my photos and what-not. Wasn’t sure if they go in the domTT folder or elsewhere?!
I hate askin’ for help but if you have the time, I’d appreciate it if you’d shoot me an email back (or reply to my comment here). I’ll check back. If you don’t have the time – I so understand.
Actually, the photos are simple … without getting into the details of how I actually do it, all you have to do is put the
imgtag into the Description field, and check the boxes for using theDomTTtooltips. Any HTML is actually allowed in there. Of course, you’re right that the images have to be somewhere … you can just upload them to your webhost using any of the usual ways … but all I did was specify an image I had already uploaded to flickr: <img src="http://static.flickr.com/48/136555658_f0eaa892a9_m.jpg" alt="Katrina in a field of flowers" />Well, what do you know. That worked. I had been playing with it amd finally my brain said “Do that!” I was using flickr, too. That was simple and I appreciate you replying back. Everything worked like a charm. Love it – so snazzy. Thank You.
I installed Ubernyms a couple days ago with no problems. I also successfully added a few acronyms and “just links.”
However now the plugin seems to have stopped working. When I add or edit an exisiting entry it is not saved. I have tried all the basic options, Replace Text, Just Link, Acronym and Initials with no luck, they are never saved and when editing an existing one it and the original is gone. My default settings remain checked and have not be changed since installation.
I plan on reinstalling the plugin but thought I would ask for your assistence before taking that step.
Well…doesn’t work for me…tooltips aren’t showing…
Very nice plugin — thanks!
I wonder if there’s any way for it to work with RSS feeds that are being parsed and displayed on a blog as well, or if Ubernyms only runs when there is direct user input. I’m working with the feedList plugin if that’s helpful.
Marc: I really don’t know what could be going on. I just tried playing with mine, and I can’t replicate anything like that. Let me know if you figure out what might be causing the problem (eg: if there’s some breaking text you put in an acronym or something … )
Daniele: is the code getting inserted? I mean, when you turn on the plugin, you should see that acronyms have the tags around them in the source, even if (for whatever reason) the DomTT javascript wasn’t working. For that matter, you could try not using the DomTT option(s) and see if that makes any difference.
Stuart: The simple answer is no, but … it works on the WordPress filter hook system, so if your feed plugin provides a hook, or is outputting through something that does, that would work, but otherwise … You have made me think maybe I should call some hooks (or make up new ones) for my feed plugin.
Hi Jaykul,
excellent little plug-in, thank you!
Just to let you know, it is disabled at the moment, because I may ahve found a bug-ette
If you have a word / phrase such as “Horse’s Mouth” then it seems that ubernyms gets a bit confuzzled, and gives an error:
Warning: preg_replace(): Unknown modifier ‘0’ in /home/www/ottered-designs.com/wp-content/plugins/ubernyms/ubernyms.php on line 410
Anyhow, if it not that, will be interesting to knwo what be happening.
Ady
YAToU YATU YAT’U … It looks like I fixed all of the quotes in acronyms problem. But the problem now is that WordPress will replace the quotes in your text with the “texturized” versions, so the text won’t actually match, so you have to specify entities, or set ubernyms to run before the default wptexturize filter. (not sure what priority you’d have to assign), but you could always UNset the wptexturize one, and then re-set it with a higher number.
The plugin does not validate XHTML 1.1.
Just that, it’s really simple to make it validate.
Hi,
Please correct me, if I am wrong.
I have just uploaded the entire Ubernyms folder into wp-plugin folder and activated Ubernym plugin. I have then created a test entry with few words RSS, PHP, HTML etc. to see its working, but it did not shown anything. The post just shows only text and nothing else.
My guess after reading the above article is, that once the plugin is activated, it will search for all words and will encode them into abbr or acronym tags. In the above case the words RSS, PHP etc. has to be replaced with abbr or acronym tags by defult.
Please advice.
Regards.
Continue from the last post.
I have checked Source of my index.php but could not find reference to either Ubernyms plugins or DomTT tooltips. Do I have to manually enter any reference in index.php or abbr, acronym tags, please advice I cann’t wait to see this lying idle.
And Thanks for the nice work.
Regards,
Stahn: I fixed the javascript inclusion and the base CSS so that (at least on my pages) it validates as XHTML (1.0 transitional, 1.0 strict, or 1.1). However, the DomTT CSS won’t validate, and I don’t really think it’s worth tying to make it do so, since clearly it needs to use Mozilla- and IE-specific rules.
DG: It needs to be in a “ubernyms” (lowercase) subdirectory of your plugins folder. If you activated the plugin, you should have a tab in your plugins control panel that lists the options for configuration. If you select the DomTT and DomTT javascript options … then if you view source on your home page, you should see the DomTT scripts in your
although, my list is rather longer than the default list in the plugin.
headsection. As far as how abbreviations will be rendered, you can see that hereHi Jaykul,
First Thanks for your reply. After writting to you, I had downloaded updated version and configured DomTT and DomTT javascript in option. And I am able to see these in page source.
Still I am not able to see the result of ubernyms i.e. the abbreviated words are not wrapped around abbr or acronym tags.
I have seen these working on your sited. Could you please be kind enough to let me know ‘what could be the casue’?
Regards,
Installed your (great, btw) plugin on wp 2.0.2 with italian language.
All what I got are a lot of warning like:
Warning: Delimiter must not be alphanumeric or backslash in c:\apache\htdocs\wordpressmania\wp-content\plugins\ubernyms\ubernyms.php on line 436
Warning: Delimiter must not be alphanumeric or backslash in c:\apache\htdocs\wordpressmania\wp-content\plugins\ubernyms\ubernyms.php on line 436
I can’t understand the reason… could you help me?
Stefano
i get the same errors as Stefano describes. is this a language thing ?
[...] 18 mai 2006 · Technologie I use the now defunct Acronym Replacer by Joel Bennett of Huddled Masses. Since I do not need any text replacement apart for acronyms, the incentive to move forward to Ubernyms is quite low as far as I am concerned. [...]
Stefano, Michael: Hmm. OK .. I guess that is a language thing …![[confused1]](http://huddledmasses.org/wordpress/wp-includes/)
Here’s what’s happening:
That line calls the regular expression replacement. I used a character as a delimiter for the regular expression which I’ve never seen used anywhere: Az I picked that because that way it never shows up inside the expression (normally one would use / or $, but in my case, I can’t be sure you won’t insert something that needs to use those IN the regular expression). Anyway. I thought I was being clever, but apparently, I was wrong… I’m trying again to be clever, using the A? character, which seems to be present in, at least, all of the European languages (you can re-download)...
But honestly, you can just pick your own character and replace them (there’s four instances of that character), and you need to replace it with a non-alphabetic character that you are not going to use in your abbreviations.
As for the French guy that doesn’t need any more text replacement … that’s fine too![[SadGoodBye]](http://huddledmasses.org/wordpress/wp-includes/)
However, even if all you’re using it for is abbreviations, youa??re better off with Ubernyms because it would use the right tag instead of the acronym tag for things like HTML that aren’t actually acronyms. That’s actually why I finally released ubernyms: I added the ability to say that some acronyms need to be spelled out in “English” because they are obscure (to your readers), and you want to place the full text in the article (in parentheses) the first time you use it … which is the correct way to do it.![[whip]](http://huddledmasses.org/wordpress/wp-includes/)
Basically, I realized that I’m tired of people arguing about
ABBRvsACRONYM(becauseABBRdoesn’t show up highlighted in IE6) when they should just write it as they would on paper. The tag is for semantics not for display, and it’s there to help computers understand what’s going on (and, for instance, pronounce it correctly for blind people). Of course, I also ended up adding the little DomTT thing for display ... but it’s key (to me) that this is in addition to the semantic tags.yehaaa! just remember: first deactivate it delete the folder ‘ubernyms’, than unpack the zip again; !!! clear your caches !!!
and now it works.
thanks for this wonderful plugin. i’ll now stresstest it against a new projekt i’m currently working on. they’ll use alot acronyms and abbr.
[...] Check it out at Huddled Masses. [...]
Hi Jaykul,
First Thanks for your reply. After writting to you, I had downloaded updated version and configured DomTT and DomTT javascript in option. And I am able to see these in page source.
Still I am not able to see the result of ubernyms i.e. the abbreviated words are not wrapped around abbr or acronym tags.
I have seen these working on your sited. Could you please be kind enough to let me know a??what could be the casuea???
Regards,
I am still awaiting your feedback. Meanwhile, I have many times re-installed but still it does not display abbr or acronmn.
I am only using default words which comes with plugin like RSS, PHP etc.
DG…
I am loving this script!! Definitely helps with the numerous military acronyms I use often. Though, the designated CSS is not working. I’m not sure why. Still fiddling with it a bit though.
Hey, Jaykul, this is a great thing to have. Do you think it would be very hard to adopt for use in b2evolution? There is Link-A-Word for that, but it’s not as sophisticated (yet?). Thanks for your reply.
Laura: is the
&lt;link...to it showing up? And if so, is it’ssrcattribute right?Lexagon: You could port it for sure. It’s just a regular-expression search-and-replace….
Jaykul — When I view the source… I get this… TAD Obviously, without the spaces… just wasn’t sure if it’d show up with the code in the comments.
Hmmm… that didn’t work… let me try this again… <acronym class=“uttAcronym” title=“Temporary Additional Duty”>TAD</acronym> Asteriks in place.
Hi Jaykul – I’ve just begun exploring your rather remarkable plugin. I am using it in a small way to create auto links to glossary terms. I’ve chosen to style the a.ubernym so that it adds a small icon to indicate a glossary term. But of, course this means that I can’t use Ubernyms for anything else. Is there a better way to do this? http://shantarohse.com/glossary/
[...] Two WordPress plugins, Nathan Olsen’s WP-SNAP! and Joel Bennett’s Ubernyms work together to create an interactive glossary for your site. [...]
[...] I just upgraded the site to WordPress 2.0.2, upgraded a few plugins and upgraded the Zmanim Calendar Generator to use v2 of the Google Maps API. I hope to have an update available for the Zmanim API that will allow easier porting to different languages. This will necessitate changing the API from using inheritance of the Java Calendar classes, to one that uses composition. I will try to keep you posted on this progress. [...]
Jaykul – I have installed this plugin many time, but still it does not pop-up at abbr or acronyms. I have created a test post with just few words like PHP, RSS, CSS, HTML. But nothing comes up. I have also checked post source, the words PHP, RSS, CSS, HTML were not wraped around abbr or acronym tags.
I am using connection theme.
Can you please advice me ‘what is wrong & why it is not displaying definitions?’
You must have noticed, all the above words are predefined in your Plugin.
Help me! to make it working.
DG…
Jaykul,
i find it a bit unstable in my situation: i found a typo in the class (line 152 the abbr isn’t closed properly), and when i changed it, the plugin produced ‘pregmatch’ errors like the ones described before.
sometimes it doesn’t catch all words, e.g. the german ‘e.V.’ isn’t catched sometimes. and sometimes it does , but only on the first occurance is catched but no further.
Laura: If you have checked the option to use the default CSS, it should put a
&lt;link...tag in your header to include the CSS style sheet, and I’m wondering if maybe that link came out wrong.Shanta: Well, each of the “types” of abbreviations has it’s own style
class, so you could just use one of the types exclusively for that. I would useuttJustLinkwhich is (obviously) the class for “Just Link” items (like the words “acronym” or “ubernyms” on my site) Obviously, the slickest thing would be to add something like “glossaryTerm” to the list … but that would require some hacking in the pluginDG: I had a look at your site … and it’s clear that the plugin’s inserting the DomTT script and css into your header, and yet, not applying any acronyms. Two thoughts: 1) are you using an output-caching plugin which might interfere? 2) are you using another acronym plugin? (because I noticed that RSS, CSS etc are being marked as “abbr” but without the CSS classes that uberbyms should add).
Michal: You’re right about the typo, I fixed that (and a whole bunch of validation errors), but I don’t know how it could be related to instability. As far as catching certain words sometimes, but not others: that’s almost certainly because of how the regular expression is written. The fact is that I wrote that carefully to try to avoid replacing abbreviations inside code … and it may be too careful for certain things. It expects word boundries (punctuation, white space) on either side of the abbreviation, and it can’t be followed by a colon “:” ... so “e.g.:” would not work, but “e.g. “ would, for instance. You can try removing the colon restriction (I can’t remember why it’s there, but I know I had a reason — in HTML plus English).
I’m curious as to why the (link) shows up on various ubernym displays on this site but is not clickable. For example if I use CSS or HTML keywords in my post, the ubernym explaination that pops up on mouseover says (link) at the end yet is not clickable. Is this not confusing for users? I know I’ve spent at least a couple of minutes trying to figure out how I’m supposed to get my mouse down to click on the (link) text. This was of course after i tried just clicking HTML and CSS, noticing that they do not go anywhere.
Am i missing something or does anyone else find that this may be a little confusing for site visitors?
> and it may be too careful for certain things
well i thought so.
> so a??e.g.:a?? would not work
but > e.g.
DG: I had a look at your site a?? and ita??s clear that the plugina??s inserting the DomTT script and css into your header, and yet, not applying any acronyms. Two thoughts: 1) are you using an output-caching plugin which might interfere? 2) are you using another acronym plugin? (because I noticed that RSS, CSS etc are being marked as a??abbra?? but without the CSS classes that uberbyms should add).
Jaykul – 1. No, I am not using an output-caching plugin or anyother cache’s. I have disable cache and even removed wp-cache directory from wp-content.
2. No, I am not using any other plugin to output acronym. Yours is the very first plugin and would remain on my site, once configured.
3. The marked “abbr” and “acronym”, which you have seen are manually entered by me, while creating a post. As the ubernyms is not yet configured. so, I am manually entering, i.e. the reason I want to make ubernymns functioning as soon as possible.
As, I had written to you earlier, that after installing ubernyms, I had created a test post fir the built-in words. But it does not add class inside the Post. so I am still manually entering.
Please, help me getting this nice work of your working at my site.
Regards, DG…
Kevin: Hmm. Those should be clickable… the tooltips were dissapearing on mouse-out instead of being sticky. Apparently the documentation on the DomTT script was in error, and I hadn’t noticed. Anyway … I fixed it by modifying the DomTT javascript. (I added “domTT_type” as a global setting for the per-tooltip “type” setting).
Michael: Just to be clear, I don’t have “e.g.” in my abbreviation list (it’s a common-enough abbreviation that if someone didn’t know what it meant, they would probably need a dictionary to read my posts anyway).
DG: I’m honestly at a bit of a loss. My suggestion would be that you:
DG: Ia??m honestly at a bit of a loss. My suggestion would be that you:
download the latest copy
Jaykul – downloaded from http://www.huddledmasses.org/wp-content/plugins/ubernyms.zip
deactivate ubernyms
DG: Deactivated
delete the ubernyms folder
DG: Deleted entire folder
upload the new copy
DG: Uploade from the fresh downloaded i.e. v2.6
reactivate ubernyms
DG: Reactivated, and the problem remain same, nothing displayed
send me a link to that test post
DG: Post Link : http://www.roks.xmgfree.com/blog/2006/05/23/test-post-for-ubernyms-plugin/
Jaykul – One thing, I have noticed toady and earlier also, I had many times “ deactivated, deleted, fresh uploaded 7 re-activated plugin. But the configuration of the first time installation of the plugin in ubernyms configure shows up again. Where as, after removing these configuration should also get removed. And at the next re-activation, deafult plugin configuration should be displayed.
Please look and advice me, as I am dead serious now to get it up and running.
And also would like to say Sorry! to you for all the botherations, I am giving to you.
Regards, DG…
I’m curious: does this plugin still work if allow_url_fopen is disabled? My hosting site does so, so anything I want to use needs to use CURL or else be easily convertible to CURL equivalents. So I thought I would ask (and if the answer is “no”, then perhaps you might be interested in converting it to use curl (a safer & more secure method, anyway).
Thanks. The demo of it on this page just blows me away, I particularly like the ones that come up for your children!
—Cindy
Hi Jaykul,
Finally, I have been able to get Ubernyms is working alongwith DOmTT tool tips.
Thanks for all your help and also Sorry! for botherations given to you.
Just wanted to ask you, is it possible to disable default browser tool tip. As this tips are currently covering DomTT pop-up.
Regards,
DG…
Hey, I’m testing ubernyms but it won’t take accentuated characters. It either badly encodes them into garbled shite, or refuses to see I am putting É to get a A? for instance.
Cindy: Ubernyms doesn’t use any network code at all; the photos are just embedded as img tags witht he source pointing to Flickr…
DG: Congrats!
Sadly, Firefox (which is the only browser that I know of that has this tooltip problem) doesn’t provide any way to disable the tooltips. That’s why I put a checkbox in Ubernyms to not use the “title” attribute when I’m using DomTT: because it gets in the way.
FranA?ois/phnk: Not sure what to tell you about that, I noticed it happening with a couple of characters when I was testing, but I don’t know why! (If anyone reading this knows something about PHP and/or mySQL that might cause this, I’d appreciate a hint…).
Well, if I ask AMA to become “A mon avis”, the A letter will get garbled. I guess the file or table in which the ubernyms data are stored should be encoded as UTF-8 for it to work properly with ASCII>128 chars.
The tooltips are very cool, but they vanish before I finish reading them (the really long ones) even though I don’t move the mouse.
I just installed this plugin and I must say it’s fantastic! However, I’m also having some problems with how the CSS is rendering. My titles show up as a wide white stripe with no text, instead of the way it works on this site. I don’t have the problem with acronyms without a description, so I’m assuming it’s a clash between my stylesheet and the ubernyms stylesheet only in the way titles are rendered. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
[...] Huddledmasses [...]