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Should Medievalist Graduate Programs require a humanities computing course?
by Dan O'Donnell 22 Aug '05

22 Aug '05

On a number of occasions recently, I have been struck by the basic ignorance of many professional medievalists concerning developments in computing that affect their daily lives. By this I don't mean the latest revisions of TEI P5 and how this will affect the markup of unclear textual variants. Rather I mean much more basic issues such as what XML is and how it is different from HTML or Word; or the relationship between fonts and characters. This has been striking to me because it is affecting basic aspects of these medievalists' work. You don't have to be a 'computer person' to benefit from Unicode, for example, and I have been surprised how many often quite complicated projects seem to be completely ignorant of fundamental aspects of humanities computing that would greatly simplify their work. So my question is this: should there be a basic humanities computing course required of beginning graduate students similar to the research methods course so many universities require or recommend? What should such a course contain? Looking around on the internet, I tend to see two types: very practical courses that concentrate on using current software and techniques (e.g. Macromedia, Excel, Word, etc.) and quite advanced courses that focus on the trivia of building standards compliant editions. I'm wondering if there perhaps is not a need for a more conceptual approach: what is Unicode? what is XML? structural vs. display markup? how the web works. database design. I realise these are not topics that speak to many graduate students in our field--who are, after all presumably interested in their disciplinary subject. But given how many projects now include an electronic component, it seems to me that we may be rapidly approaching the time when a medievalist should be expected to have a basic conceptual grasp of contemporary humanities computing. What do others think? I'm thinking of asking the same question on Medtext and, phrased more generally, on Humanist. But before I do, I thought I'd ask here. I suspect the issue is more important for medievalists and classicists than it is for scholars in more modern periods: more of us seem to work more closely with things that can be digitised. Or is that discipline prejudice? -d -- Daniel Paul O'Donnell Director, Digital Medievalist Project (http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/) Associate Professor of English University of Lethbridge Lethbridge AB T1K 3M4 Tel. +1 (403) 329-2377 Fax. +1 (403) 382-7191 (@webmail)

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TEI and concurrent hierarchies
by Marjorie Burghart 22 Aug '05

22 Aug '05

Dear DMs, Maybe this should be better posted on the TEI list, but I hope some of you could have interesting experience in the field ! I'm encoding an ongoing project in TEI XML, and I'm encountering problems to represent concurrent hierarchies. I'd like to markup some rhetorical elements, that can either be contained in paragraphes (<p> tags), or contain <p> tags, depending on their length and importance. Therefore, I can't use <seg>, for instance. >From a "logical" point of view, it seems to me that <div> tags would be perfect (with a convenient type), but in this case I would have a problem of concurrent hierarchies (possible overlapping of <div> and <p> elements). The solutions proposed in the current TEI Guidelines for the handling of multiple hierarchies would work, BUT I'm afraid they would fairly complicate the processing of the encoded texts with standard XML tools. I thought about customizing the DTD to make <p> tags empty, which would be convenient for my purpose, but the markup wouldn't be TEI compliant any more (as CDATA is not allowed as child of div or body)... In a way, it seems to be the problem too for, eg, the quite seducing HORSE approach recently discussed by S. Bauman reguarding TEI (http://www.mulberrytech.com/Extreme/Proceedings/html/2005/Bauman01/EML2005B…) ? Thanks in advance for your help and experience (especially concerning the efficiency of processing the marked texts) ! Marjorie -- Marjorie Burghart Université Lyon II

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Re: [dm-l] Should Medievalist Graduate Programs require a humanities computing course?
by Larry Swain 20 Aug '05

20 Aug '05

> > Well, of course I'd like to see such classes taught in every > doctoral program -- but from what i know of such programs, I think > most of them would oppose it. Why, it would take time away from > seminars! (sheesh) > > While I understand your concern about e.g. xml vs html - and I know > it is ONLY an "e.g.": at least in the old days medievalists were as > knowledgeable in computer-humanities materials and procedures as > anyone, and probably more so. What has happened ? In the wild and wooly days, there were few specialists in computers: if you wanted it done, you did yourself. While computing has become more general, real computing use for research has become more specialized, more tools need to be learned etc. What has happened? Specialization for one. Just a thought. -- _______________________________________________ Surf the Web in a faster, safer and easier way: Download Opera 8 at http://www.opera.com Powered by Outblaze

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Re: [dm-l] Should Medievalist Graduate Programs require a humanities computing course?
by Norman Hinton 20 Aug '05

20 Aug '05

Well, of course I'd like to see such classes taught in every doctoral program -- but from what i know of such programs, I think most of them would oppose it. Why, it would take time away from seminars! (sheesh) While I understand your concern about e.g. xml vs html - and I know it is ONLY an "e.g.": at least in the old days medievalists were as knowledgeable in computer-humanities materials and procedures as anyone, and probably more so. What has happened ?

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[Fwd: [MEDTEXTL] OCR-software]
by Dan O'Donnell 18 Aug '05

18 Aug '05

---------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- Subject: [MEDTEXTL] OCR-software From: "Margarete Springeth" <margarete.springeth(a)SBG.AC.AT> Date: Thu, August 18, 2005 3:41 pm To: MEDTEXTL(a)listserv.uiuc.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello list, the team running the Middle High German Conceptual Database (MHDBDB) is desperately looking for a new text recognition software (OCR) that is well suited for scanning primarily 19th century printed editions. Our old software is still running on DOS-basis and can no longer be adapted to our new hardware/software configuration. The commercially available OCR-packages (like OmniPage, ReadIris, ABBY, etc.) are not well suited for our purposes, since they are only working well with newer print media. We would be well served if someone could supply us with a Windows version of something like Kurzweil, Optopus, ProLector or a similar software that has a very high learning capacity for fonts. Can anyone help us out or direct us to a source that could supply us with what we are looking for??? Price is also a factor, of course! Thanks, Margarete Springeth & Klaus M. Schmidt. ------------------------------------------------------------- Mittelhochdeutsche Begriffsdatenbank (MHDBDB) Dr. Margarete Springeth Universitaet Salzburg Akademiestrasse 22 A - 5020 Salzburg Tel. +43 / 662 / 8044 - 4347 Fax: +43 / 662 / 6389 - 4347 mailto:margarete.springeth@sbg.ac.at http://www.sbg.ac.at/ger/people/springeth.htm -- Daniel Paul O'Donnell Director, Digital Medievalist Project (http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/) Associate Professor of English University of Lethbridge Lethbridge AB T1K 3M4 Tel. +1 (403) 329-2377 Fax. +1 (403) 382-7191 (@webmail)

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[Fwd: Re-visiting Romanesque sculpture in Britain and Ireland]
by James Cummings 10 Aug '05

10 Aug '05

FYI -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re-visiting Romanesque sculpture in Britain and Ireland Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 11:13:10 +0100 From: AHDS Visual Arts <info(a)VADS.AHDS.AC.UK> Reply-To: AHDS Visual Arts <AHDS-VISUALARTS(a)JISCMAIL.AC.UK> To: AHDS-VISUALARTS(a)JISCMAIL.AC.UK Romanesque stone sculpture pervades buildings throughout Britain and Ireland. It can be found in parish churches and cathedrals, houses and halls, castles and museums throughout these isles. Rarely, however, do we get to spend time actually looking at this rich part of our heritage in detail. A new resource of over 10,000 images is now available via AHDS Visual Arts that lets you do just that. The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland (CRSBI) is an electronic archive of British and Irish Romanesque stone sculpture. It exists to photograph and record all the surviving sculpture, making this important part of British and Irish heritage available over the internet. The significance of this evolving project as an authoritative scholarly resource cannot be understated as significant quantities of previously unrecorded material have come to light and there are many examples of sculpture that are being recorded, catalogued and photographed in an academic context for the first time. Records of Romanesque sculpture in Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Cambridgeshire (including Ely Cathedral), Cheshire, Hampshire, Huntingdonshire, Kent, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Sussex, Warwickshire and Worcestershire are already available online. CRSBI complements other AHDS Visual Arts’ architecture and sculpture based resources including the Exeter Cathedral Keystones & Carvings: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Sculptures & their Polychromy collection (http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/collections/ECKC.html) and the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association collection which contains images and textual information on over 2,300 public sculptures and monuments in Britain (http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/collections/PMSA.html). For more information on CRSBI please go to: http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/collections/CRSBI.html View the CRSBI collection and the entire AHDS Visual Arts catalogue at http://visualarts.ahds.ac.uk -- Dr James Cummings, Oxford Text Archive, University of Oxford James dot Cummings at oucs dot ox dot ac dot uk

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dtd/schema generators?
by Daniel Paul O'Donnell 22 Jul '05

22 Jul '05

Hi, There used to be a very good (free) dtd and schema generator at http://www.hitsw.com/xml_utilites/. This site allowed you to upload an xml file and produce a rough Document Type Definition (dtd) or Schema file that was suitable for tweaking. I used it as recently as this past April, but it doesn't seem to be there any more. Does anybody know of an equivalent? -- Daniel Paul O'Donnell <daniel.odonnell(a)uleth.ca> University of Lethbridge

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CFP: International Medieval Congress, Leeds 2006, Digital Medievalist Sessions (01-Sept-2005; 10-13-July-2006)
by James Cummings 08 Jul '05

08 Jul '05

Call For Papers: International Medieval Congress 2006, Leeds Digital Medievalist Abstract Submission Deadline: 1 September, 2005 The Digital Medievalist project invites abstracts to be submitted for 20 minute papers to be delivered in either of two sessions at the thirteenth International Medieval Congress which will take place in Leeds, UK, from 10-13 July 2006. Session Abstracts: Digital Medievalist General Session: Electronic Surrogates The general session investigates any use of digital technology in Medieval Studies, but especially concentrates on the formulation of best practice in digital resource creation, particularly the problems and possibilities of electronic 'surrogates' (e.g. electronic representations of primary material, including but not limited to editions, facsimiles, databases) in researching the Middle Ages. Digital Medievalist Specific Session: Text vs Data The specific session focuses on the nature of textual data in electronic editions. Are there fundamental differences between primary source text when it is seen as text and when it is seen as data (e.g. in a textual database)? What are the benefits and drawbacks of one over the other? How do the differences affect our research with electronic media? To submit proposals for either of these sessions please fill out the online form available at http://purl.org/cummings/DM-Leeds2006.html before 1 September, 2005. --James Cummings Digital Medievalist Project. www.digitalmedievalist.org

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Fonts
by Abdullah Alger 08 Jul '05

08 Jul '05

Does anyone know where I can download a font which has tironian notae and punctus elevatus? Abdullah

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Many hands make light work?
by Daniel Paul O'Donnell 04 Jul '05

04 Jul '05

Hi all, I'm writing to encourage members of the list to add to Wiki entries anything useful or interesting they see on, receive from, or contribute to the list. To name some recent examples: if you are the member of a project, institute or organisation, please consider adding a brief profile (see http://sql.uleth.ca/dmorgwiki/index.php/Projects for other examples); if you know or learn of a special font or tool, consider adding a page about it or adding to a relevant existing entry; if you see a term or acronym you didn't understand, consider adding an entry on it once you know what it means. Adding to the Wiki is really quite a quick and simple process (especially after you've tried once) and it is difficult for much to go wrong: we can undo any changes (you can do so yourself), and a couple of us keep track of all changes to the wiki to look for formatting errors, etc. we can repair. The goal here is not to add a burden to posters to the list (we are all busy people and don't necessarily have the time to answer questions twice). But the Wiki is in some ways intended to serve as the collective intelligence of the community. Just as on other lists, poster often post summaries of replies they receive to questions, on this list, you can post answers to the Wiki. Any attention you can devote to this, is very much appreciated. -d -- Dr. Daniel Paul O'Donnell Associate Professor of English Director, Digital Medievalist Project University of Lethbridge Lethbridge AB T1K 3M4 vox: +1 (403) 329-2377 fax: +1 (403) 382-7191 URL: http://people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odonnell/ Digital Medievalist Project: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ (@wiglaf)

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