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RE: [dm-l] Useful free tools for finding unicode characters
by Binkley, Peter 24 Jun '04

24 Jun '04

Another very useful Unicode reference is the EKI database: http://www.eki.ee/letter/. As well as helping navigate through Unicode and other encodings, it has a nice function to show what happens if you take a text encoded in one system and convert it to another. Peter Peter Binkley Digital Initiatives Technology Librarian Information Technology Services 4-30 Cameron Library University of Alberta Libraries Edmonton, Alberta Canada T6G 2J8 Phone: (780) 492-3743 Fax: (780) 492-9243 e-mail: peter.binkley(a)ualberta.ca

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RE: [dm-l] Re: Manuscript-transcription correlation
by Binkley, Peter 24 Jun '04

24 Jun '04

It seems to me that Peter Baker has indicated the real value of XSLT in this context: that it can be used for on-the-fly presentation or preprocessing, as appropriate. The real limited resource in this kind of work is not storage space or processing capacity but my ability to learn new languages. Since this is an area where the scholars are also building the tools, it makes a lot of sense to keep the toolkit as simple as possible. Peter > -----Original Message----- > From: Peter Baker [mailto:psb6m@virginia.edu] ... > But if a thing has got to perform fast, it might be best to > use the XSLT > to create static pages or a database, or turn data from a > database into > pages, rather than have it dynamically create pages from a large > underlying text. > Peter Binkley Digital Initiatives Technology Librarian Information Technology Services 4-30 Cameron Library University of Alberta Libraries Edmonton, Alberta Canada T6G 2J8 Phone: (780) 492-3743 Fax: (780) 492-9243 e-mail: peter.binkley(a)ualberta.ca

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Re: dm-l Digest, Vol 1, Issue 3
by Carol Pasternack 24 Jun '04

24 Jun '04

I'm thinking about working on a project a year or two from now that involves a ms facsimile, edition, etc., but in the meantime I would like to know what issues to think about before I get started such as what factors help determine what framework to set up or what software to use. I don't want to do a whole bunch of work on something and then discover that I made less than favorable decisions and have to redo a bunch of tedious work. So, I am looking forward very much to learning from the primer and from lurking on this list about important concerns and solutions. I suspect I will have much better questions later in the process. Carol Braun Pasternack English Department University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3170 --On Wednesday, June 23, 2004 7:02 PM -0600 dm-l-request(a)uleth.ca wrote: > Send dm-l mailing list submissions to > dm-l(a)uleth.ca > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > dm-l-request(a)uleth.ca > > You can reach the person managing the list at > dm-l-owner(a)uleth.ca > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of dm-l digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: Re: Experience using Microsoft's XSLT? (Peter Boot) > 2. Re: Re: Experience using Microsoft's XSLT? (Lou Burnard) > 3. Re: Re: Manuscript-transcription correlation (Peter Baker) > 4. [dm-l]: Overlapping Markup SIG (WAS Experience using > Microsoft's XSLT?) (Dorothy C. Porter) > 5. Re: Re: Experience using Microsoft's XSLT? (Martin Holmes) > 6. What every digital medievalist should know? (Daniel O'Donnell) > 7. What would people like to see in a primer and/or series of > primers? (Daniel O'Donnell) > 8. Fonts (Patrick Conner) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 19:30:42 +0200 > From: Peter Boot <pboot(a)xs4all.nl> > Subject: Re: [dm-l] Re: Experience using Microsoft's XSLT? > To: Digital Medievalist Community mailing list <dm-l(a)uleth.ca> > Message-ID: <40D9BE42.6000202(a)xs4all.nl> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed > > >> Given >> the standard XML architecture of these editions as these have evolved, >> whereby textual divisions are set in the content of elements but pages >> are marked with empty anchor elements (eg <pb/>) this is just what XSLT >> etc find very tricky indeed. If you can do it (and I have not yet seen >> this done, though I have heard lengthy explanations of how it *might* be >> done) you can only do it with great difficulty with the standard tools. > > At the Constantijn Huijgens Instituut we have done this (more or less). > Our edition of the 'Geraardsbergse handschrift' (Geraardsbergen > Miscellany) is based on a TEI encoded XML file where text structure is > used to define the hierarchy, and pages are encoded as pb-elements > (milestones). Nevertheless, we present our edition on a page by page > basis. > > The edition is available at > http://www.chi.knaw.nl/epub/mvn/geraardsbergen/index.html. I'm afraid > everything is in Dutch right now, but from the 'Inleiding' > (introduction) option, the xml and xslt source files are available. The > edition pages can be accessed from the 'editie' (edition) or 'inhoud' > (contents) option. On some pages (e.g. > http://www.chi.knaw.nl/epub/mvn/geraardsbergen/f109r.html), there's also > a facsimile. > > (We'll create full facsimile-cum-transcription editions in the future; > this one is a book based publication, converted into digital form > recently). > > In the present edition, performance is not an issue, as the pages > contain static html. If I were to write this stylesheet again, in the > interest of performance and clarity, I would separate the milestone > handling from producing the final output. I'd use an intermediate > stylesheet to transform the milestone elements into full page elements > at the highest level of the hierarchy. These page elements would contain > those segments of the text, div, p (etc.) elements that the associated > page contains. The resulting XML file, would, I'm sure, perform > beautifully in a dynamic environment. > > Peter > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 18:55:51 +0100 > From: Lou Burnard <lou.burnard(a)computing-services.oxford.ac.uk> > Subject: Re: [dm-l] Re: Experience using Microsoft's XSLT? > To: Digital Medievalist Community mailing list <dm-l(a)uleth.ca> > Message-ID: <40D9C427.7030907(a)computing-services.oxford.ac.uk> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed > > Martin Holmes wrote: > >> I think Peter's point is a very good one, though; in XML, one must >> prioritize one hierarchy over another where they overlap; if the >> conceptual structure is prioritized, the physical must be relegated to >> milestones. >> >> I think there is a long-term solution to this. I think multiple markups >> can exist on the same text, as long as they're in "different >> dimensions"; it's hard to explain, but imagine the text as a string >> going through space, and the markups as planes radiating out from it. > > [... snip ...] > > That's right. You can have multiple annotations on the same XML > structure. This technique, now generally known as "stand-off" > annotation, is currently quite popular in the field of linguistics, to > handle things like prosodic vs syntactic hierarchies. You segment your > text once, and then you create as many different views of it as you > like. Each view constitutes a single hierarchy, and is composed of > pointing elements which identify how the fragments of your segmented > texts are to be combined in that particular hierarchy. Something like it > is described in the chapter of the TEI Guidelines which addresses the > issue of non-hierarchic structures. > > Your Shakespeare is pretty neat, by the way! How does one get to see the > XML source though? > > Lou > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 13:56:58 -0400 > From: Peter Baker <psb6m(a)virginia.edu> > Subject: Re: [dm-l] Re: Manuscript-transcription correlation > To: Digital Medievalist Community mailing list <dm-l(a)uleth.ca> > Message-ID: <40D9C46A.3000700(a)virginia.edu> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed > > The task Martin wants to perform is exactly the kind of thing that XSLT > is good at and could do easily. > > I also see Peter's point, echoed here. Until we have a markup language > that handles overlapping hierarchies natively, all proposed solutions > will be annoying in some way. Still, I have a higher opinion of the > abilities of XSLT than Peter does (I've been using it in font > development, of all things, so I look at it as pretty flexible), and > I'll bet it could handle the XML workarounds for overlapping hierarchies > such as the one proposed in the paper by Alexander Czmiel linked to by > James Cummings. > > But if a thing has got to perform fast, it might be best to use the XSLT > to create static pages or a database, or turn data from a database into > pages, rather than have it dynamically create pages from a large > underlying text. > > Peter Baker > > Martin K. Foys wrote: > >>> At 08:49 AM 23/06/2004, Peter Robinson wrote: >>> > If you can do it (and I have not yet seen this done, >>> > though I have heard lengthy explanations of how it *might* be done) >>> > you can >>> > only do it with great difficulty with the standard tools. The >>> > problem here >>> > is our old bugbear overlapping hierarchies, and XSLT etc just don't >>> > have any >>> > easy answer to this -- and maybe no reliable answer at all. >>> >> >> I have not worked with XSLT, so this might seem like a naive question, >> but is it possible to write a bridge program to copy text from a >> specific starting tag to an ending tag, create a new file for just >> that text, and then display that file next to the MS image? >> ~ Martin Foys >> >> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >> >> Martin K. Foys >> Assistant Professor >> Department of English >> Hood College >> Frederick, MD 21701 >> >> vox: 301~696~3740 >> fax: 301~696~3586 >> ether: foys(a)hood.edu >> >> Bayeux Tapestry Digital Edition: http://www.sd-editions.com >> >> _______________________________________________ >> dm-l mailing list >> dm-l(a)uleth.ca >> http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l >> >> > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 4 > Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 15:01:30 -0400 > From: "Dorothy C. Porter" <Dorothy.Porter(a)uky.edu> > Subject: [dm-l]: Overlapping Markup SIG (WAS Experience using > Microsoft's XSLT?) > To: dm-l(a)uleth.ca > Message-ID: <1088017290.2158fb40Dorothy.Porter(a)uky.edu> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" > > Hello All, > > At last year's Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Member's Meeting, I (along > with Peter Robinson, and Patrick Durusau of the Society for Biblical > Literature) convened a Special Interest Group on Overlapping Markup > issues. We haven't done very much since then, unfortunately, but Patrick > and I are slowly working on a web page that will highlight various > different approaches to dealing with overlapping markup and conflicting > hierarchies. I'll post an announcement here when the page goes live - > it's good to see that folks are so interested in this problem! > > There is also an overlapping markup listserv, to join go to > http://listserv.brown.edu/tei-ol-sig.html. (Also, if you're interested in > reading the report from last year's meeting, you can find it here: > http://www.tei-c.org.uk/Activities/SIG/Overlap/olm01.txt) > > Many thanks to Daniel et. al. for putting this listserv together! > > Dot Porter > > > *************************************** > Dorothy Carr Porter, Program Coordinator > Collaboratory for Research in Computing for Humanities > University of Kentucky > 351 William T. Young Library > Lexington, KY 40506 > > dporter(a)uky.edu 859-257-9549 > *************************************** > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 5 > Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 12:14:03 -0700 > From: Martin Holmes <mholmes(a)uvic.ca> > Subject: Re: [dm-l] Re: Experience using Microsoft's XSLT? > To: Digital Medievalist Community mailing list <dm-l(a)uleth.ca> > Message-ID: <6.1.1.1.0.20040623120952.01d9cec0(a)pop.uvic.ca> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed > > Hi there, > > At 10:55 AM 23/06/2004, you wrote: >> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >> >> Martin Holmes wrote: >> >>> I think Peter's point is a very good one, though; in XML, one must >>> prioritize one hierarchy over another where they overlap; if the >>> conceptual structure is prioritized, the physical must be relegated to >>> milestones. >>> I think there is a long-term solution to this. I think multiple markups >>> can exist on the same text, as long as they're in "different >>> dimensions"; it's hard to explain, but imagine the text as a string >>> going through space, and the markups as planes radiating out from it. >> >> [... snip ...] >> >> That's right. You can have multiple annotations on the same XML >> structure. This technique, now generally known as "stand-off" >> annotation, is currently quite popular in the field of linguistics, to >> handle things like prosodic vs syntactic hierarchies. You segment your >> text once, and then you create as many different views of it as you >> like. Each view constitutes a single hierarchy, and is composed of >> pointing elements which identify how the fragments of your segmented >> texts are to be combined in that particular hierarchy. Something like >> it is described in the chapter of the TEI Guidelines which addresses >> the issue of non-hierarchic structures. > > Sounds like exactly what I was thinking of. Do you know what kind of > markup tools are used to edit texts in this way? > > >> Your Shakespeare is pretty neat, by the way! How does one get to see the >> XML source though? > > If you "View Source", you'll see something like this: > > <docroot href="AWW_F_ISE.xml"></docroot> > > where the href is the actual markup document. I use the "wrapper > document" as a way to avoid hard-coding the XSL stylesheet into the > original markup. The markup in this case is a proprietary system created > by Mike Best, the prof involved, but TEI versions of the markup have > subsequently been generated from it. > > Cheers, > Martin > > ______________________________________ > Martin Holmes > University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre > mholmes(a)uvic.ca > martin(a)mholmes.com > mholmes(a)halfbakedsoftware.com > http://www.mholmes.com > http://web.uvic.ca/hcmc/ > http://www.halfbakedsoftware.com > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 6 > Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 13:46:52 -0600 > From: Daniel O'Donnell <daniel.odonnell(a)uleth.ca> > Subject: [dm-l] What every digital medievalist should know? > To: dm-l(a)uleth.ca > Message-ID: <40D9DE2C.5020806(a)uleth.ca> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed > > As part of our (coming) website, we are thinking of including working > paper, guidelines, project reports, etc. Something I'd like to see is a > version of Jim Marchand's What Every Medievalist Should Know (WEMSK) on > medtext for scholars working with digital media. Obviously "a primer for > working with computers" is too broad; but perhaps some kind of topic by > topic discussion of important issues one should know about. > > Does anybody know of a good community-focussed digital primer that might > serve as a model (e.g. perhaps aimed at teachers or some similar group)? > This idea is still in its early stages. My preference would be for > something developed through the community as a whole. > > -dan > > -- > Daniel Paul O'Donnell, PhD > Associate Professor of English > University of Lethbridge > Lethbridge AB T1K 3M4 > Tel. (403) 329-2377 > Fax. (403) 382-7191 > E-mail <daniel.odonnell(a)uleth.ca> > Home Page <http://people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odonnell/> > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 7 > Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 16:14:25 -0600 > From: Daniel O'Donnell <daniel.odonnell(a)uleth.ca> > Subject: [dm-l] What would people like to see in a primer and/or > series of primers? > To: dm-l(a)uleth.ca > Message-ID: <40DA00C1.6050209(a)uleth.ca> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed > > I've had a couple of off line responses to my question about a primer. > This might be a good opportunity for participants at all levels of > expertise to mention the types of thing they wish they knew (had known) > in starting or completing various projects. > > It is important in a community like this that members not feel > intimidated about raising simple questions or problems as well as > complex or advanced. Don't be afraid to say what you think for the list > as a whole! > > Cheers. > -dan > > -- > Daniel Paul O'Donnell, PhD > Associate Professor of English > University of Lethbridge > Lethbridge AB T1K 3M4 > Tel. (403) 329-2377 > Fax. (403) 382-7191 > E-mail <daniel.odonnell(a)uleth.ca> > Home Page <http://people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odonnell/> > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 8 > Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 21:01:57 -0400 > From: "Patrick Conner" <pconner(a)wvu.edu> > Subject: [dm-l] Fonts > To: <dm-l(a)uleth.ca> > Message-ID: <s0d9efd1.074(a)WVUGW01.wvu.edu> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII > > . . And damned fine fonts they are. > > I'm hoping that, down the line, Peter, you'll keep us up to date on > here regarding unicode and other font development. Can you tell me > whether MS-Word in its newest Macintosh iteration can run Junicode > smoothly? > > --pat > > Patrick W. Conner, Director > West Virginia University Press > P.O. Box 6295, West Virginia Univ. > Morgantown, WV 26506-6295 > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Voice: 304.293.8400 x491 > Fax: 304.293.5380 > Email: pconner(a)wvu.edu > Web page: www.wvupress.com > >>>> psb6m(a)virginia.edu - 6/23/04 1:56 PM >>> > [cut] > > Still, I have a higher opinion of the > abilities of XSLT than Peter does (I've been using it in font > development, of all things, so I look at it as pretty flexible), and > I'll bet it could handle the XML workarounds for overlapping > hierarchies > such as the one proposed in the paper by Alexander Czmiel linked to by > > James Cummings. > > [cut] > > Peter Baker > > Martin K. Foys wrote: > >>> At 08:49 AM 23/06/2004, Peter Robinson wrote: >>> > If you can do it (and I have not yet seen this done, >>> > though I have heard lengthy explanations of how it *might* be done) > >>> > you can >>> > only do it with great difficulty with the standard tools. The >>> > problem here >>> > is our old bugbear overlapping hierarchies, and XSLT etc just don't > >>> > have any >>> > easy answer to this -- and maybe no reliable answer at all. >>> >> >> I have not worked with XSLT, so this might seem like a naive > question, >> but is it possible to write a bridge program to copy text from a >> specific starting tag to an ending tag, create a new file for just >> that text, and then display that file next to the MS image? >> ~ Martin Foys >> >> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >> >> Martin K. Foys >> Assistant Professor >> Department of English >> Hood College >> Frederick, MD 21701 >> >> vox: 301~696~3740 >> fax: 301~696~3586 >> ether: foys(a)hood.edu >> >> Bayeux Tapestry Digital Edition: http://www.sd-editions.com >> >> _______________________________________________ >> dm-l mailing list >> dm-l(a)uleth.ca >> http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l >> >> > > > _______________________________________________ > dm-l mailing list > dm-l(a)uleth.ca > http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > dm-l mailing list > dm-l(a)uleth.ca > http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l > > > End of dm-l Digest, Vol 1, Issue 3 > **********************************

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fonts
by James Cummings 24 Jun '04

24 Jun '04

The discussion of Junicode and fonts raises a very important issue in making medieval resources available on the web. Using Junicode or another font created with the right unicode glyphs in is great if you can make sure your users viewing the pages have that font and are in fact using it to view these pages. I've seen all sorts of solutions from the bad to not-so-bad but never really seen one that doesn't have some limitations somewhere. Of course the inevitable future tense of computing means that when everyone is using browsers which support CSS3's "webfonts" then this won't be as much of a problem. (This is a way to have the browser download the font on the fly if it does not already have a copy of it.) At the OTA we are primarily concerned with freely archiving electronic texts for long term preservation and so are able to store unicode character entities with less worries about how actually to display them for users. (Side note: If you have electronic medieval editions of texts and want free archiving of them for posterity, please see http://www.ahds.ac.uk/litlangling/depositing/index.htm for more information.) So what is best? Obviously encoding your webpages as (say) UTF-8 is a good start. Force user to download a font for your site with appropriate glyphs? Use images of the glyphs instead of actual characters(*shudder*)? Transliterate into ascii characters/editorial marks? Use markup to allow easy replacement of different solutions on the fly? I have my own preferences but am interested in what other people have done. -James --- Dr James Cummings, Oxford Text Archive, University of Oxford James dot Cummings at ota dot ahds dot ac dot uk

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Fonts
by Patrick Conner 24 Jun '04

24 Jun '04

. . And damned fine fonts they are. I'm hoping that, down the line, Peter, you'll keep us up to date on here regarding unicode and other font development. Can you tell me whether MS-Word in its newest Macintosh iteration can run Junicode smoothly? --pat Patrick W. Conner, Director West Virginia University Press P.O. Box 6295, West Virginia Univ. Morgantown, WV 26506-6295 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Voice: 304.293.8400 x491 Fax: 304.293.5380 Email: pconner(a)wvu.edu Web page: www.wvupress.com >>> psb6m(a)virginia.edu - 6/23/04 1:56 PM >>> [cut] Still, I have a higher opinion of the abilities of XSLT than Peter does (I've been using it in font development, of all things, so I look at it as pretty flexible), and I'll bet it could handle the XML workarounds for overlapping hierarchies such as the one proposed in the paper by Alexander Czmiel linked to by James Cummings. [cut] Peter Baker Martin K. Foys wrote: >> At 08:49 AM 23/06/2004, Peter Robinson wrote: >> >If you can do it (and I have not yet seen this done, >> >though I have heard lengthy explanations of how it *might* be done) >> >you can >> >only do it with great difficulty with the standard tools. The >> >problem here >> >is our old bugbear overlapping hierarchies, and XSLT etc just don't >> >have any >> >easy answer to this -- and maybe no reliable answer at all. >> > > I have not worked with XSLT, so this might seem like a naive question, > but is it possible to write a bridge program to copy text from a > specific starting tag to an ending tag, create a new file for just > that text, and then display that file next to the MS image? > ~ Martin Foys > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > Martin K. Foys > Assistant Professor > Department of English > Hood College > Frederick, MD 21701 > > vox: 301~696~3740 > fax: 301~696~3586 > ether: foys(a)hood.edu > > Bayeux Tapestry Digital Edition: http://www.sd-editions.com > > _______________________________________________ > dm-l mailing list > dm-l(a)uleth.ca > http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l > > _______________________________________________ dm-l mailing list dm-l(a)uleth.ca http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l

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Re: [dm-l] Re: Experience using Microsoft's XSLT?
by Joris van.Zundert 24 Jun '04

24 Jun '04

I'm afraid mr. Burnard is slightly misinterpreting a popular IT-proverb. It's not that there are good or bad programmers and programming languages, but that there are no good or bad solutions, only more and less adequate ones. As for programming languages: yes, there are bad programming languages and XSLT is a good example of a bad programming language. Which it actually should be, because XSLT was never meant as a programming language, but as a template based transformational language for transforming XML into XML or into representational forms like HTML and not for logical handling of data. It's therefore very unfortunate that the XSLT 2.0 recommendation of the w3c includes even more characteristics that are typical for programming languages (like data types and logical structures). Rather XSLT 2.0 should have confined the main purpose of XSL to where it's good at: simple straightforward transformations of (chunks of) XML. Sophisticated and complex handling of data, structure and functionality is more efficiently and adequately done or programmed in a robust programming environment (like Eclipse), preferably in matured programming languages (like Java or Python) using agile protocols. But that's all theory off course. In the real world XSLT will probably become somewhat like, and as popular as hybrid languages such as PHP, JSP and ASP. Such 'languages' just throw the whole bunch together: data, data structure, logic, representation and functionality. Which seems nice because it looks like you can do anything, fast. But in practice such languages in the long run lead to unmaintainable code where the boundaries between data and logic are unclear and portability and interoperability become zero. It's all about separation of concerns and responsibilities. It strikes me as rather strange that someone who very justifiably promoted XML/TEI as a way to separate the concerns of meaning and form, fails to see that XSLT does not do a very good job at this. y.s., Joris van Zundert mr. Joris J. van Zundert (MA) Researcher & Programmer, dep. of Dutch Literature and Linguistics NIWI (Netherlands Institute for Scientific Information services) [visiting address] Joan Muyskenweg 25 Amsterdam [postal address] Postbus 95110 1090 HC Amsterdam [phone] +31 (0)20 462 86 47 [fax] +31 (0)20 665 80 13 [e-mail] joris.van.zundert(insert_an_at_sign_here)niwi.knaw.nl [internet] www.niwi.knaw.nl >>> lou.burnard(a)computing-services.oxford.ac.uk 6/23/04 18:20:47 >>> Peter, darling, you are talking nonsense. If you want a system based on words, mark up the words and XSLT will cope very well. (Yes, people do it: cf the BNC and many others). Likewise, if you want a system in which physical hierarchies matter, reflect that in your markup system. There are no good or bad programming languages: just good or bad programmers. And designers. Lou Peter Robinson wrote: > Well, let us start off with a little minor controversy. > > In the midst of converts to and enthusiasts for XSLT and that family of > tools, here is my two pennysworth. I suggest that a serious and full-scale > electronic edition of a typical medieval work, with the (now!) standard > requirement that it integrate text transcription/edition and images, to a > standard satisfactory for a scholarly user, cannot be made by these tools > from an XML base. > > There are two reasons for this. The first reason is that it seems to me the > fundamental requirement of such an edition is that it should present a > single page of a manuscript transciption alongside a single manuscript image > (or, in variants of this, a single column alongside the image, etc). Given > the standard XML architecture of these editions as these have evolved, > whereby textual divisions are set in the content of elements but pages are > marked with empty anchor elements (eg <pb/>) this is just what XSLT etc find > very tricky indeed. If you can do it (and I have not yet seen this done, > though I have heard lengthy explanations of how it *might* be done) you can > only do it with great difficulty with the standard tools. The problem here > is our old bugbear overlapping hierarchies, and XSLT etc just don't have any > easy answer to this -- and maybe no reliable answer at all. > > The second reason is to do with the nature of the XSLT programming language > and the kind of things we want to do with our displays, even in situations > where the problem of overlapping hierarchies does not hit us. Take a single > word in (for example) a line of transcription of a manuscript of the > Miller's Tale. A reader might think: I would like to see what any or all > other manuscripts have at this word; I want to know whether there is an > editorial comment on the readings at this point; I would like to see how the > pattern of readings at this point maps against the overall pattern of > relationships among the manuscripts; I would like a lot of this information > held within the display so that just passing the mouse over the word will > pop up some of it. And I want this for every word in every manuscript, and > I want all this generated real fast for each page as I am impatient, and I > want quite a few other things too. Typically, this information is scattered > right across many different XML source files. It all has to be fetched, > amalgamated, sorted, served up for say some five hundred words on a typical > manuscript page, all in a microsecond. And also, for the programmer: many > things could go wrong in here, with all the conditional tests which need to > be made at each point and all the possible branchings the program might have > to take to cope with the messiness of manuscript life, so the programmer > needs a responsive and transparent programming environment, where it is easy > to diagnose what is going wrong, where, as the displays are built. I sure > would hate to try to do this in XSLT etc. While XML is fine for many things, > it does not look a great environment for programming to me. > > The question is germane because it now seems that a lot of effort is going > in to persuading humanities scholars, like us, that: > A. we put all our data into XML, preferable the TEI variety > B. we use XML programming tools like XSLT to get it to the reader > I think the first proposition is unquestionably right: that battle has been > won. But XML's victory in the first does not mean that XML is the right > answer for the second. Indeed, I don't think it is. > > So, over to you all. I have set people this challenge before but here it is > again: someone, try to duplicate a typical single page say of our Hengwrt > Digital Facsimile from our XML source. And good luck to you. > > All the best > Peter Robinson _______________________________________________ dm-l mailing list dm-l(a)uleth.ca http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l

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Re: [dm-l] What would people like to see in a primer and/or series of primers?
by Dorothy C. Porter 24 Jun '04

24 Jun '04

I'd like to make sure that any primer included a section on metadata - what it is, what it can do, how to document it and how to present it to users. This would probably be part of the project management primer (or section of primer) suggested by Kathryn Powell. [Metadata is "data about data": a library catalog record, descriptive and technical information about electronic files, descriptions of image processing, etc.] For the past year I've been putting together a metadata framework for the Electronic Boethius project (using METS, the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard <http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/>), and recently presented my findings at the Joint International Conference of the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing and the Association for Computers and the Humanities, so metadata is in the forefront of my mind at the moment! Dot Porter *************************************** Dorothy Carr Porter, Program Coordinator Collaboratory for Research in Computing for Humanities University of Kentucky 351 William T. Young Library Lexington, KY 40506 dporter(a)uky.edu 859-257-9549 ***************************************

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RE: What every digital medievalist should know?
by Perry Willett 24 Jun '04

24 Jun '04

I forgot about these! Yes, these are available at: <http://www.lib.umich.edu/eebo/archive/archive_production.html> Perry Willett University of Michigan pwillett(a)umich.edu -----Original Message----- From: Thomas Izbicki [mailto:izbicki@jhu.edu] Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 8:46 AM To: dm-l(a)uleth.ca; pwillett(a)umich.edu Subject: [dm-l] RE: What every digital medievalist should know? I am meeting with partners in U of Michigan's Text Creation Partnership this weekend. I can determine whether their encoding instructions for Early English Books Online are available to other projects. Thomas Izbicki Thomas Izbicki Collection Development Coordinator Eisenhower Library Johns Hopkins Baltimore, MD 21218 (410)516-7173 fax (410)516-8399 >>> pwillett(a)umich.edu 6/24/2004 8:40:05 AM >>> A couple of publications are in process that should help answer this question. The first is the _Blackwell Companion to Digital Humanities_, edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens and John Unsworth, to be published in Nov 2004: <http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/book.asp?ref=1405103213&site=1> (Unfortunately, this one will cost about $150, but perhaps you can convince your library to purchase it.) Julia Flanders, as part of an NEH grant, is editing a guide to encoding early printed books, with plans to include plenty of good advice about encoding in general. Preliminary report at: <http://dev.stg.brown.edu/projects/wwpneh/>. Perry Willett University of Michigan pwillett(a)umich.edu _______________________________________________ dm-l mailing list dm-l(a)uleth.ca http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l

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RE: What every digital medievalist should know?
by Thomas Izbicki 24 Jun '04

24 Jun '04

I am meeting with partners in U of Michigan's Text Creation Partnership this weekend. I can determine whether their encoding instructions for Early English Books Online are available to other projects. Thomas Izbicki Thomas Izbicki Collection Development Coordinator Eisenhower Library Johns Hopkins Baltimore, MD 21218 (410)516-7173 fax (410)516-8399 >>> pwillett(a)umich.edu 6/24/2004 8:40:05 AM >>> A couple of publications are in process that should help answer this question. The first is the _Blackwell Companion to Digital Humanities_, edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens and John Unsworth, to be published in Nov 2004: <http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/book.asp?ref=1405103213&site=1> (Unfortunately, this one will cost about $150, but perhaps you can convince your library to purchase it.) Julia Flanders, as part of an NEH grant, is editing a guide to encoding early printed books, with plans to include plenty of good advice about encoding in general. Preliminary report at: <http://dev.stg.brown.edu/projects/wwpneh/>. Perry Willett University of Michigan pwillett(a)umich.edu _______________________________________________ dm-l mailing list dm-l(a)uleth.ca http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l

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RE: What every digital medievalist should know?
by Perry Willett 24 Jun '04

24 Jun '04

A couple of publications are in process that should help answer this question. The first is the _Blackwell Companion to Digital Humanities_, edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens and John Unsworth, to be published in Nov 2004: <http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/book.asp?ref=1405103213&site=1> (Unfortunately, this one will cost about $150, but perhaps you can convince your library to purchase it.) Julia Flanders, as part of an NEH grant, is editing a guide to encoding early printed books, with plans to include plenty of good advice about encoding in general. Preliminary report at: <http://dev.stg.brown.edu/projects/wwpneh/>. Perry Willett University of Michigan pwillett(a)umich.edu

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