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2794 discussions

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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Fwd: [dm-l] What would people like to see in a primer and/or series of primers?
by Kathryn Powell 24 Jun '04

24 Jun '04

Sorry, meant to post this to the list earlier, but sent it from the wrong address. Cheers, Kathryn Begin forwarded message: From: Kathryn Powell <kathryn.e.powell(a)man.ac.uk> Date: 24 June 2004 9:24:07 BST To: Digital Medievalist Community mailing list <dm-l(a)uleth.ca>, daniel.odonnell(a)uleth.ca Subject: Re: [dm-l] What would people like to see in a primer and/or series of primers? Okay, I'll venture a response to Dan's question... I think any primer should include some advice regarding IT project management. Managing a research project involving the creation of digital resources can be a quite different experience from managing a more traditional research project, and a lot of people go into it for the first time blind to what's involved. Such a guide might include advice about what you need to know before putting in a grant bid, how to think about time and budget, how to storyboard a website or database, and keeping academic and IT resources in dialogue. I certainly wish we'd had such advice when we began work on our database project here at Manchester -- it might have saved us some time that could be put towards further academic research. And thanks to Dan for creating this list -- I think it has the potential to be a really useful resource. Cheers, Kathryn Kathryn Powell Research Fellow Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL UK (+44) 0161 275 3157 kathryn.e.powell(a)man.ac.uk http://homepage.mac.com/kapowe On 23 Jun 2004, at 23:14, Daniel O'Donnell wrote: > 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/> > > > > > _______________________________________________ > dm-l mailing list > dm-l(a)uleth.ca > http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l > >

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What every digital medievalist should know?
by Daniel O'Donnell 23 Jun '04

23 Jun '04

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/>

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Re: Experience using Microsoft's XSLT? and Is there a good acronym FAQ anywhere?
by Daniel O'Donnell 23 Jun '04

23 Jun '04

Reposting for Roberto Rosselli Del Turco: Il mer, 2004-06-23 alle 04:19, Daniel O'Donnell ha scritto: >> >> For those who don't know what I am talking about: XSLT (eXtensible >> Stylesheet Language-Tranformations) is a stylesheet language used >> (amongst other things) for converting documents written in XML >> (eXtensible Markup Language) such as used by the TEI (Text Encoding >> Initiative) into HTML for display on the web. >> >> Once the web site is up, we should put all these acronyms into a FAQ >> (Frequently Asked Questions) file. Does anybody know of a good existing >> list of acronyms for beginners? > > Apart from good old Acronym Finder (http://www.acronymfinder.com/), here are some similar sites (in the sense that you don't have a listing, you have to look for the term you want explained): http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/, http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/index.html http://www.pcwebopaedia.com/ This is a long list of acronyms, but not fully up to date and subject to quite restrictive terms of use: http://www.comadvantage.com/babel.html Ciao -- Roberto Rosselli Del Turco roberto.rossellidelturco at unito.it Dipartimento di Scienze rosselli at ling.unipi.it del Linguaggio Then spoke the thunder DA Universita' di Torino Datta: what have we given? (TSE) Hige sceal the heardra, heorte the cenre, mod sceal the mare, the ure maegen litlath. (Maldon 312-3) -- 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/>

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[dm-l]: Overlapping Markup SIG (WAS Experience using Microsoft's XSLT?)
by Dorothy C. Porter 23 Jun '04

23 Jun '04

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 ***************************************

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Important Adminstrative Note
by Daniel O'Donnell 22 Jun '04

22 Jun '04

Hello all, Sorry for my many postings today. When the listserver crashed this morning it reset a number of options on the list, including one important setting which I have just restored: ***When you hit reply on this list, your e-mail will be automatically distributed to the list***. If you want to e-mail somebody privately, you will need to enter their address explicitly in the address line. This was the original setting, but it was changed this morning by accident. This behaviour is the same as that found on ansax-l, and medtext-l, but is different from that on tei-l. The main danger comes if you are complaining about a posting to a friend. If you're not careful, you may end up posting your comments publicly. Since none of us would do that, however, we should be o.k. -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/>

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