Subject: [ANSAX-L] Digital Edition Interfaces
From: Patrick Conner <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:08:06 -0400

Couldn't agree with you more, Dan. And CAEDMON is indeed a robust little
thing. ;-) {I wink, but I mean it!] 

We need a group with some authority behind it to begin to standardize
edition interfaces. They would need some principles which would keep all
that work from being trussed up in one or two browsers which go by the
way. The TEI wanted to make sure that texts wouldn't be encoded into
obsolescence; is anyone looking for ways to stabilize presentation and
interface? 

--Pat

>>> "Dan O'Donnell" <[email-masked]> 03/18/09 3:16 PM >>>
>
> Meanwhile, those considering purchasing /Junius 11/ on CD-ROM should
> know: it is fantastic when I can use it properly. The images are
> amazing, especially under magnification; you can even see some of the
> drypoint. There's some very useful commentary as well. You can't run
> it on most Macs, however--and I do wonder if at some point it will
> cease to run on newer PCs, too. (You can also learn from my list of
> things I've tried, if you're trying too, and not have to replicate all
> my experiments.)
>
> (The /eBeowulf/ has all the advantages of the /Junius 11 /and more,
> /and/ it still runs on my Macs, by the way. That's only helpful if you
> want to see the /Beowulf/ manuscript, of course---but who doesn't?)
>
And if I might add another digital edition that will work on everything
ever invented including lynx (the original non-graphical browser) and I
suppose, in one sense, paper: my Cædmon's Hymn edition. When we did that
we started with a couple of principles, including that it must be OS
independent (the only OS dependent things is the search function, which
requires Windows).

I will say I often wonder about the cost of the added-value that comes
with building custom interfaces for scholarly editions. Most of what we
need to do--view and magnify images, navigate between texts, compare
texts, etc. is already built into core software like browsers. I often
think that designers should package their content using the highest
quality coding and images and the simplest possible navigation, rather
than focussing on bells and whistles. Users who need to see the
edition's content in specialised ways will be much better off exporting
the material to already existing specialised tools--even if that means
just copying and pasting parallel texts into Notepad or opening an image
up in the GIMP or photoshop.

As digital content providers and designers we can't possibly anticipate
every specialised user need--no more than book content providers or
designers could: but if we provide the best quality digital texts and
images, our users are still better off that users of equivalent print
texts, since they can copy and paste, and otherwise manipulate our
material without ruining the original copy.

-dan
> Best,
> Nicole
>

--
Daniel Paul O'Donnell
Associate Professor of English
University of Lethbridge

Chair and CEO, Text Encoding Initiative (http://www.tei-c.org/)
Founding Director, Digital Medievalist Project
(http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/)
Chair, Electronic Editions Advisory Board, Medieval Academy of America

Vox: +1 403 329-2377
Fax: +1 403 382-7191 (non-confidental)
Home Page: http://people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odonnell/ (
http://people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odonnell/ )

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  Reminder: For assistance write to Bill Schipper ([email-masked])