Our problem is analphabetism
Our problem is analphabetism. That is, people who cannot read/write in their own languages. It may sound a pretty weird audience, but actually it’s tens of millions of people in Europe (almost no minority language is taught in schools). Same technology maybe pretty useful if used to contact reent migrants who probably won’t be much fluent in the local written language, while they already may communicate orally.
Our idea: every node is (at least) text + audio. What we want is the capability to start from any of the two (an audio or a text file) and add the missing part later if and when possible. The Half-Multimedia-Node should work anyway.
The first thing that comes to mind is nodefamily. 1-1 relationships between book pages and audio, than hack the node template to make sure the audio is shown. Too bad I am a decent PHP/SQL programmer but an absolute newbie on Drupal. So I’d like to hear what you guys think about it.
BTW, do you think there’s any easy way to have the audio start to play on its own once a node is open?
Re: BTW, do you think there’s any easy way to have the audio..
"BTW, do you think there’s any easy way to have the audio start to play on its own once a node is open?"
This isn't something that can really be determined by the content creator, as the way that non-HTML media is handled can be dependent on the user agent and availability of plugins.
I use Firefox on Linux; embedded media simply doesn't happen (not that I want it to). Even if I select a link to an MP3 file, it takes a while for Amarok (my audio application) to download it and start playing.
From an accessiblity standpoint, it is best not to start any media without the user's permission. Automatic playing of audio material can be a real pain for users of screen readers, who are trying to listen to their device, not some background audio.