Date: 1 February 1988, 11:44:12 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: texts wanted (19 lines) -------------------------------------------- From Mark Olsen before we scan and keyboard some texts by walter pater, does anyone have or know of the following texts on disk: *marius the epicurian* and *gaston de la tour*. i am not sure that the latter exists in print form, so we might have to keyboard it from mss. any other texts by pater would also be useful. thanks. mark ========================================================================= Date: 1 February 1988, 13:41:31 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: OS/2 (50 lines, and not of code) -------------------------------------------- From Jack Abercrombie Last week I attended an IBM sponsored course on OS/2, IBM's new micro operating system. I came away with some personal observations that I haven't seen in most published descriptions. First, OS/2 is the IBMer's ultimate answer to microcomputing: mainframe computing brought to you in a smaller box. For me, the idea of batching processing in the background while I work in the foreground interactively is an exciting opportunity that I have missed since I left the mainframe and the minicomputer worlds for the micro environs. Nevertheless, I worry that the processor is too small to handle the multi-tasking. I am also concerned that most humanist don't need that kind of power. In almost all cases, they require better peripherals and not a box that can juggle several tasks at once. My second observation is that OS/2 will not be as difficult to teach as some have led us to believe. Most users, I don't think, will start off using OS/2 fully and will continue to work in the provided DOS mode. When these users start to move to batch processing, there is limited knowledge needed to make the machine work reasonably well. The reason for this is that in the installation of OS/2 the configuration files sets up the entire system for a user. As long as the user does not fool with the default settings, they should be able to work in a batch mode. Of course, they will not be able to control the hardware as well as they possible could if they understood how to set speeds of processing, memory allocation, etc. My last observation concerns the hardware. It is clear to me that OS/2 needs and eats memory. To avoid swapping memory to disk which slows your processing time down and can lead to other nasty problems, buy OS/2 with more than enough memory especially if you plan to do more than two or three tasks at a time. Also, I have strong doubts that OS/2 multi-tasking will work reasonably fast on low-end machines such as an IBM AT or System 2 (Model 50). I think that eventually will find that IBM will suggest that if you really want to do multi-tasking do it on an 80, 90, 100, and other models to be announced. Of course, you could always use the mainframe, n'est-ce pas? ========================================================================= Date: 2 February 1988, 09:03:37 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Ibycus computer users -------------------------------------------- From Sterling Bjorndahl I would like to get a head count, if I may, as to how many Ibycus computer users there are reading HUMANIST. I am interested in setting up an online discussion forum for Ibycus users (especially the microcomputer version). If we are few enough, and we are all on BITNET/NETNORTH/EARN, we can set it up very "cheaply" using CSNEWS@MAINE's CSBB bulletin board utility (to subscribe on CSNEWS you must send an interactive message - hence the network limitation). The advantage of CSNEWS is that we won't have to mess with LISTSERV software :-). I am interested in hearing from all interested parties. Sterling Bjorndahl Institute for Antiquity and Christianity Claremont, CA BJORNDAS@CLARGRAD.BITNET ========================================================================= Date: 2 February 1988, 09:07:53 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: OS/2 (45 lines) -------------------------------------------- From Wayne Tosh I found the observations on OS/2 interesting, particularly the one concerning whether humanists even need multi-tasking, given the nature of most of their activities (such as word-processing). On the one hand, such a blanket dismissal is always a bit troubling. On the other, we do have in my own department a colleague who is pushing for the purchase of a 286-class machine to support the multi-tasking environment of Desqview. While I myself like the idea of popping from one application to another quickly, I wonder whether most of my colleagues wouldn't rather have more (cheaper) workstations. They have found the learning of word-processing (PC-WRITE) a steep enough process that most are, for the moment, still unwilling to go on to database and spreadsheet software, for instance. So I wonder whether it isn't premature to be spending our limited funds on a 286 machine in order that, as this colleague puts it, "Everyone can have a chance to sit down and play (sic) with it (Desqview)." One measure of the prematureness of this proposal is, I think, my colleagues' unenthusiastic reception of a menuing interface which I recently put at their disposal. If they feel, as they seem to, that it is too much to read a few lines of options from which to choose in order to execute some program or other, then I doubt that they will take readily to a shell like Desqview and the juggling of several processes at once. Are you aware of any discussion on this subject? Wayne Tosh, Director Computer Instructional Facilities English Dept--SCSU St. Cloud, MN 56301 612-255-3061 WAYNE@MSUS1.bitnet ========================================================================= Date: 2 February 1988, 09:09:30 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: RE: texts wanted (19 lines) -------------------------------------------- From Wayne Tosh One possible source of further information might be Mark Emmer Catspaw, Inc. P. O. Box 1123 Salida, CO 81201 voice: 303-539-3884 bulletin board: 303-539-4830 ARPA: emmer@arizona.edu Mark publishes irregularly the newsletter "A SNOBOL's Chance" and markets his implementation of SNOBOL4+ for the PC, in addition to Elizabethan texts and the King James Bible on disk. Wayne Tosh, Director Computer Instructional Facilities English Dept--SCSU St. Cloud, MN 56301 WAYNE@MSUS1 ========================================================================= Date: 2 February 1988, 09:16:21 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Re: OS/2 and multitasking (56 lines) -------------------------------------------- From Hans Joergen Marker Jack Abercrombie had some comments on OS/2, and although I share his generally skeptical view on the matter, there is a point in his comment in which I disagree. It is: "I am also concerned that most humanist(s) don't need that kind of power. In almost all cases, they require better peripherals and not a box that can juggle several tasks at once" This may or may not hold true for most humanists, but it is not true in the field of history. Many historians may feel that they don't need much computing power because the software to make use of the increased power is not available yet. But in order to make the computer an adequate research tool for the historian, and not just an expanded typewriter/calculator, what we need is exactly a multitasking software environment. (On the lines of what Manfred Thaller describes as the historical workstation.) In this concept calculation of ancient mesure and currency, geographical references and searches for appropriate quotations are handled by background applications. Leaving the historian free to take care of his actual job of making history out of the bit and peaces of information on the past. I feel that in historical research we often have a problem with making one person's research useful for the next person doing research in a related field. Most historians feel that they have to understand for themselves how the different units of a particular system of mesurement relate to each other and in that way we all remain on the same level of abstraction. It is my hope that through the use of software as the means of communicating the results of research, a qualitatively different way of making historical research will be made possible. An example: If I know that the Danish currencies of the early 17th century relate in a certain way to each other, I provide not only the article with tables and stuff like that, but also a piece of software that does the actual conversions. This approach would naturally be more useful if a general framework existed in which the different pieces of software fitted in, and combined to an inte- grated unit: The historical workstation. Given the existense of a historical workstation future research can take two major paths, either utilising the tools provided in it for traditional historical research aims, or refining or expanding the tools provided. In this concept software development becomes an integrated part of historical research. The term for this could be "historical informatics". Hans Joergen Marker ========================================================================= Date: 2 February 1988, 09:22:36 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: OS/2 (38 lines) -------------------------------------------- From Sebastian Rahtz The note on OS/2 was interesting; it seems curious that IBM are writing a new operating system to do what non-micro users have had for years. Why should I get excited about OS/2? Because it will allow me to run MS-DOS programs in batch mode? wow. Since MS-DOS has at least one root as a cut-down Unix, it seems perverse to build it up again in a new direction - why not just use Unix? My regular daily machines are a Sun 3/50, and a Masscomp 5600; both of these have a single chip (68020) doing the work which provides enough power for me and a number of other people, in the context of a mature operating system (Unix) which already gives me a vast selection of tools for my work. If I had any money, a Sun 3/50 of my own would set me back about 5000 pounds, which I dont regard as a quantum leap above a fully configured PS/2 (such as a model 80 with 8 Mb of memory etc). Of course this is a trivial point, and IBM aren't going to give up on OS/2, and it will all be successful, yawn yawn. But lets not kid ourselves that it adds anything to our desktop facilities; now if you gave me a machine with half a dozen transputers in, and a language to let me play with them, there would be an intellectual stimulus in the challenge of co-ordinating my new friends... Let me hear praise for OS/2 from someone who has used both that and a decent Sun workstation, and then I'll start being convinced. yrs a dinosaur ========================================================================= Date: 2 February 1988, 14:00:26 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Text encoding (36 lines) The following is extracted from a note from Paul Fortier, who is not a member of HUMANIST, but who suggested that we might air this on HUMANIST in order to get reactions. Replies may be sent to Paul at FORTIER@UOFMCC.BITNET or to me (IDE@VASSAR.BITNET). ----------------------------------- From: It seems to me that the ACH text encoding guidelines should have, parallel to the printed version, a program version which will run on as many machines as possible, at least all micros. The user would load this program when she/he wants to begin inputting a new text, and the program would interrogate the user on the features of the text: language, genre, author/anon., date, edition used, and on and on and on, right down to how accents are coded in languages that use them. I had thought this would be a useful way of encouraging users to have an explicit header record on text files so that archives could pass them on, etc. This is rarely suggested in the literature, possibly since most of us old timers wrote such information with a felt-nib pen on the top of the hollreith cards in the first box of the file, and never really thought to put it in the text file when we switched up to better technology. A second advantage to this approach is that it could also at the same time be used to fill in tables for filter and markup minimization routines (like Chesnutt's program for printer-drivers) automatically. That way people who wanted a five or ten-character code for an 'e' grave accent could have it, and I could input e`. ========================================================================= Date: 2 February 1988, 14:04:12 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: OS/2 -------------------------------- From Mark Olsen Jerry Pournelle got it right: OS/2 -- Yesterday's Software Real Soon Now. Unfortunately, the MS-DOS-OS/2 kludge is the only serious game in town for day-to-day IBM micros. Why would anyone want multi-users on a 286/386 box, anyway? If running applications in the background is all we really want OS/2 for, then use something like DoubleDOS (which is being given away for $29.97). OS/2 will win, inspite of it all, because of those three magic letters: IBM. Mark ========================================================================= Date: 2 February 1988, 14:05:02 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: OS/2 (38 lines) -------------------------------- From Jack Abercrombie Let me clear up a point concerning OS/2. You can only run MS-DOS applications in the foreground and not in the background in batch mode. There is a linker system for converting DOS applications into OS/2 applications. It appears that the linker works best for "C" programs rather than TURBO PASCAL though we have yet to try it out since we lack sufficient memory to run OS/2 on our System 2 machines and IBM AT's. Another aspect about OS/2 that another reader raised is that there is insufficient third party software for applications. I think then you might ask me what we plan to do given this situation and also the fact that we are going to install a System 2 (80) on the network for general access to large text bases from remote locations. Jack, what operating system do you plan to run? The answer is UNIX! OS/2 is not there yet and won't be in place for our type of application until 1989. Furthermore, we have a number of SUNs and APOLLOs that also are UNIX based as well as VAX computers so that the sensible thing for us over the short-term and perhaps the long-term is a UNIX operating system. Of course, we are willing to review this decesion at a later date. JACK ABERCROMBIE ASSISTANT DEAN FOR COMPUTING (HUMANITIES) DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR COMPUTER ANALYSIS OF TEXTS UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ========================================================================= Date: 2 February 1988, 14:06:22 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: OS/2. multi-tasking, and all that (49 lines) -------------------------------- From Jim Cerny At the risk of getting somewhat tangential to the interests of most HUMANIST subscribers, I can't resist making a few observations about multi-tasking. I have been using VAX/VMS systems (from 8650 size to VAXstation 2000 size) and a Macintosh for quite a while. As multi-tasking, or the promise of it, comes to Macs and IBM PCs, I occasionally try to extrapolate from our VAX/VMS usage to imagine how people will use multi-tasking on desk-top machines. "Our" covers various kinds of users. There are myself and the other staff in our Large Systems Support Group who are relatively expert in VMS usage and who are to varying degrees involved in VMS system management. There are faculty users. There are student users. Assorted others. The big multi-tasking use I see is background printing. Then, for some users there is the need to run batch jobs. For faculty in the definitely non-humanist number-crunching areas, there are spells when long batch jobs get run again and again. For staff involved in system management there are various periodic (daily, weekly, monthly) maintenance tasks to run in background. But overall it is background printing that is needed on the large machines and which I see as the primary extra task(s) needed on the desktop machines. When I look long and hard at the most sophisticated things we do as computer support staff, it is to "spawn" one or more additional processes to do something while leaving the original process suspended. That is multi-tasking, but not very demanding. It is what Switcher has provided on the Macintosh, except (and this is a big except) for the appropriate memory and process management to keep one process from straying and clobbering another one. Conclusion-by-extrapolation: If you have multi-tasking you will use it at least a little, but for most desktop users I see it as an incrementally useful capability and not a revolution. Jim Cerny, University Computing, University of NH. ========================================================================= Date: 2 February 1988, 16:08:59 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: OS/2 (39 lines) -------------------------------- From dow@husc6.BITNET (Dominik Wujastyk) Regarding the OS/2 debate, I am definitely in need of a multitasking operating system, although I do not think of myself as a particularly computer-intensive worker. I.e., I mainly process text, not program or anything. I use TeX all the time for formatting everything I write, except letters. While PCTeX on a 12Mhz Compaq port. III is quite fast, as TeX goes (about the same as a medium loaded Vax), I still have to twiddle my thumbs while it chugs away. I cut my stuff up into 10--20 page pieces, which helps a bit, but the TeX processing still seems an intrusive nuisance when one it concentrating on the ideas IN the text. Even worse is the fact that I cannot print in bacground mode. TeX output is put on paper as a graphics image, so on a matrix printer -- which is what I have at home for drafting -- it is *very* slow by any normal standards. This wouldn't matter so much if I could print in the background, but with PC DOS I can't. Some printer buffers and spoolers can help, and I have used this route to alleviate the problem to some extent, but it is still not the answer, because a page of graphics is a LOT more information than a page of ASCII character codes. My ideal would be to be able to have a wordprocessor in the forground, sending text to TeX running as another job, with my previewer putting the pages up on the screen in another window simultaneously (or as soon as TeX had finished them). And, of course, background printing. Now THAT would be cooking! Dominik ========================================================================= Date: 3 February 1988, 00:04:51 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: OS/2, Multitasking, and all that (21 lines) -------------------------------- From ked@garnet.Berkeley.EDU (Charles Faulhaber) Multitasking I use a Sun 3/50 and right now have 9 windows open, in five of which processes are running. I use it primarily as a writing tool (so far), but have found it immensely useful to have two files open simultaneously in order to compare 2 versions of a text or to cut and paste from one file to another or to access my mainframe account while working on the Sun. I was a reasonably experienced UNIX user, but I find no comparison between "old" UNIX and a windowing environment. ========================================================================= Date: 3 February 1988, 00:11:00 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Dictionaries; OS/2 and restraint (39 lines) -------------------------------- From goer@sophist.uchicago.edu(Richard Goerwitz) In NELC at the University of Chicago there are several projects underway that one might generally call dictionary-making. We have, of course, the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, and the Hittite Dictionary. We also have a couple of peo- ple doing lexical work in related areas. Not all of this work is exactly state of the art. The CAD has been done mostly without any electronic help. The Hittite Dictionary is being done with TRS-80 machines. Others are using dBase on MS-DOS machines. I am wondering whether there are any established approaches one can use to text-base construction. dBase is not exactly a linguist's dream. Are there better approaches available, either in theory or "off the shelf"? Let me add a parting word about another topic: OS/2. I'd hate to see the dis- cussion get too out of hand until we know what we are talking about. After all not too may folks have seen OS/2 yet. And even fewer have gotten to play with it. As for speculation about whether the majority of scholars will want to work in a multitasking environment, I don't think there's much way of knowing. We just don't have software that is built to take advantage of it in a way that will attract scholars in the humanities in large numbers. Restraint!! -Richard ========================================================================= Date: 3 February 1988, 00:13:35 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Printing in the background ---------------------------- From goer@sophist.uchicago.edu(Richard Goerwitz) In response to grumblings about not being able to "print in the background," let me point out that in MS/PC-DOS, printing is inherently multitasking. You can run the DOS print command in the background. If you have a word-proces- sor that doesn't print in the background, print to disc (most wp's have this feature). Then print the file using this DOS print command. A good print spooler will speed this process up a lot. (A print spooler is a program that intercepts DOS printer interrupts, sending the file being printed into RAM memory, where it waits for opportune moments to be fed out to the printer. A good spooler will work fast, but yet shut down quickly when the user demands computer processing time. Good examples of MS-DOS spoolers include the PD programs MSPOOL and SPOOL.) If background down/uploads are needed, use Mirror, a Crosstalk clone that does background work like this. If more serious background work is necessary, use a program called Double Dos. As one recent poster pointed out, it can be had for under $30. -Richard ========================================================================= Date: 3 February 1988, 00:16:05 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Deadline for the ACH Newsletter is soon! (22 lines) Vicky Walsh, editor of the Newsletter of the Association for Computing in the Humanities, reminds me that the deadline for submitting material to be considered for the next issue is 19 February. Any member of the ACH -- one of our major sponsors -- is welcome to submit material for the Newsletter. As difficult as it may be to believe, some computing humanists cannot be reached by electronic mail, indeed, some even actively refuse to become connected. So, the ACH Newsletter does reach people whom you cannot contact through HUMANIST. Vicky can be reached by e-mail; she is imd7vaw@uclamvs.bitnet. Yours, Willard McCarty ========================================================================= Date: 3 February 1988, 09:02:25 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Multitasking (41 lines) ---------------------------- From Sebastian Rahtz I find the claim that all the average person wants multi-tasking for is background printing incredible! Like Charles Faulhaber, I often have half a dozen windows open when I am using a Sun, and all I am doing is writing something, like him. Is it so difficult to imagine how I can have one window for my mail (brooding on what to reply), one for playing Mazewar, one for editing my file, one for running it through LaTeX, another for previewing, another for a database process thats getting some data I want? I do not know about you people and your computers, but they are my no means fast enough for me - I often want to start a new job while the computer is tediously processing another. If we take a reasonable job of editing a book, it took me about 40 minutes on a Sun 3 to process from scratch the whole of a conference proceedings I just finished (3 passes through LaTeX and 1 through BibTeX - dont tell me to use a silly Mac, I have my standards..); what am I supposed to do while this burbles away? read a book? no, i want to write a letter, edit a chapter thats just been processed, run a program etc; i WANT multi-tasking. I suspect that those who think of multi-tasking as 'batch processing' haven't used a proper windowing system... or to be more 'academic', lets take a project being worked on here, a archaeological database that extracts details of pots and sends an image of each in PostScript to a NeWS process; if we did this normally, the database would suspend, draw a picture and then resume; with each pot in a separate window, i can play with the generated images while the database is working, and I can keep a number of images on my desk. Sebastian Rahtz ========================================================================= Date: 3 February 1988, 09:04:22 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Paul Fortier's sensible remarks about textual encoding (21 ll.) ---------------------------- From Grace Logan Paul Fortier says such sensible things! I would just like to enthusiastically support his suggestions, especially the part about header information being easily (or even automatically) entered. I have been in computing long enough to have gone back to texts as much as ten years later and I fervently wish that Paul's recommendations had been in force when they were input. Having the kind of information Paul talks about at the top of every file would have saved me so much time! ========================================================================= Date: 3 February 1988, 09:07:38 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Multitasking and all that (16 lines) This is really a rather interesting discussion. I recall something that Gaston Bachelard says in _The Psychoanalysis of Fire_, that "Man is a creature of desire, not of need." Let us not ever put shackles on our imagination, especially not here! Willard McCarty, mccarty@utorepas ========================================================================= Date: 3 February 1988, 20:14:07 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Multitasking according to IBM (20 lines) ---------------------------- From Jack Abercrombie Just a quick note on IBM's concept of multi-tasking. What was discussed in the seminar I attended was not having multiple windows open at the same time though they made it clear that that is a direction IBM hopes to move in with the release of the Presentation Manager at the end of 1988. No. They presented a mainframe batch processor, and not a true windows environment. JACK ABERCROMBIE ========================================================================= Date: 3 February 1988, 20:16:22 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Fortier-style texts (19 lines) ---------------------------- From Sebastian Rahtz It seems obviously sensible that texts should have a "Fortier heading" explaining what they are about, but I dont really think a specific program for adding this stuff is really a very good idea. Surely you text-encoding standard gurus have dealt with the idea of the format of a text header, however it is created? If not, shame on you... sebastian rahtz ========================================================================= Date: 3 February 1988, 20:17:59 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Data headers and SGML (not too vehement) (41 lines) ---------------------------- From David Durand There has already been a lot of discussion of SGML on this list which does not have to be re-opened. However, it is worth noting that a document type definition or SGML prologue is detailed documentation of a file format, with the additional advantage that one is required to use mnemonic names to indicate the special information in the text. That is not to say that an SGML prologue gives you all the information you might want, just that it gives much that is essential, and requires (hopefully) meaningful names for all indicated information. Some other points are worth noting: the creation of the structure definitions for a file provides a very useful discipline to control the consistency of entered data, despite its time consuming creation and seeming obstruction of the straightforward process of data entry. I think that in some ways the SGML debate is like the programming community's debate over structured programming. It all seems like such a bother, in part because it is an attempt to reduce the total effort of all users of the data at the expense of some extra effort on the part of the preparers. Finally, it is worth remembering that SGML is optimized for interchange, and that fairly simple tools can be used to convert to and from SGML and special purpose formats to allow more efficient searching or data retrieval or scansion or whatever. Well, a simple comment about format headers has turned into a small rant on the virtues of standard markup. In closing I'd like to say that I don't necessarily think that SGML is perfect, just that it has addressed the right questions in the right KIND of way. Certainly, it could have been ten times simpler and still done the job. ========================================================================= Date: 3 February 1988, 20:26:26 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Multitasking and windows (36 lines) ---------------------------- From Sebastian Rahtz I used to play with Microsoft Windows; apart from the speed etc, we can assume (I hope) that OS/2 will not *look* that different. What was wrong with it was not that it was cripplingly slow, but that the area of the screen you could carve into windows was too small. The 25 x 79 screens on our PCs are TOO SMALL to work well on. Bring on at least A4 size screens if not bigger.... theres no point in saying this mind, its like asking for a better keyboard. Do any punters in HUMANIST-land have an extended edition OS/2 with the micro-DB2 grafted underneath? Does it exist yet? Now there IS an interesting development, if it works as it might, with references to data being passed through a relational database manager instead of sequential file access. Somewhere recently I read an interview Laurence Rowe (of INGRES fame) who saw the future as a hypercard interface to INGRES; I like this - lets stop seeing our hard disks as collections of named files, but see it as giant relational database reflecting the relationships of all the data we possess. Our applications need then only pass on an abstract, file independent, query to the OS, and get back an answer. hoorah, high-level coding rules OK. I expect Bill Gates and his boys thought of all this ages ago. Does anyone have experience with Microsoft Bookshelf? sebastian rahtz ========================================================================= Date: 3 February 1988, 20:30:31 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Contributions to the ACH Newsletter (20 lines) Good news: Nancy Ide tells me that contributors to the ACH Newsletter don't have to be members of that organization. So, if you've got something to say to North American computing humanists, or something to ask them, the Newsletter is also open to you, even if (God forbid) you are not a member of the ACH. Again, the editor is Vicky Walsh, her address imd7vaw@uclamvs.bitnet, the deadline for the next issue 19 February. Yours, Willard McCarty ========================================================================= Date: 3 February 1988, 20:45:39 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Printing in the background (24 lines) ---------------------------- From dow@husc6.BITNET (Dominik Wujastyk) Richard Goerwitz didn't take the point about background printing of graphics data. The DOS PRINT.COM only works with a stream of plain ASCII characters, not graphics data. The other solutions he mentions, e.g. DoubleDos, may well work, although all the "simple" multitasking efforts on the market that I have tried all had some fatal flaw. Background spooling can work, as I said, but for more that a very small amount of graphics data a PC will run out of memory very quickly. A test file of the words "this is a test" ended up a file of 991 bytes, to give an concrete example. This is, of course, for a printer that does not support downloaded fonts, so the whole bitmap for every character is there. Dominik Wujastyk ========================================================================= Date: 4 February 1988, 16:38:01 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: 9 windows at once (18 lines) ---------------------------- From Ronnie de Sousa Re Cha Faulhaber's nine windows open at once: if you are just writing, you don't need OS/2 for that. All you need is a decent scholar-oriented word processor like NOTA BENE, in which you can also open nine files at once, and even automatically compare the two (finding next point of discrepancy and then next point of agreement.) ...Ronnie de Sousa, Toronto ========================================================================= Date: 4 February 1988, 16:43:48 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Looking for Adam Smith on-line (21 lines) ---------------------------- From Malcolm Brown Does anyone have either "Theory of Moral Sentiments" or "Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith on-line and available? If so, please send a note to me (GX.MBB@STANFORD.BITNET) thanks! Malcolm Brown Stanford University ========================================================================= Date: 4 February 1988, 17:07:51 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: OS/2, multitasking, multiple windows, and more (31 lines) Last month we had a discussion about some of our needs for software. Now we seem to be having another about hardware. We all know how silly and moronic the ruling things of the present tend to be, being nevertheless very useful, but what about the future? What gizmos would we as humanists like to have? Perhaps our collective influence is usually minuscule, but I suspect that if we imagine well, what we imagine may stir someone with the means. Multitasking would appear to be one thing we want, with a multitude of windows, and not just for wordprocessing. Diverging back to software, perhaps the problem of small screens can be solved by having "rooms" as well as "windows." (Who has heard of the work being done at PARC on "rooms"? Would one of our members there like to report on this?) Who has had experience with current multitasking shells, e.g., DESQVIEW, MicroSoft Windows? Does this experience suggest anything about future systems? What else? Willard McCarty mccarty@utorepas.bitnet ========================================================================= Date: 5 February 1988, 09:07:16 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Headings for documents (25 lines) ---------------------------- From amsler@flash.bellcore.com (Robert Amsler) Sebastian Rahtz expressed my sentiment exactly. There already exist plenty of programs in which you can create this header information, they are called `text editors'. The problem is there doesn't (yet) exist any statement of what the lines of such text should contain. Rather than a hopeless quest to write software for every PC on the market, it would be more sensible to describe what the attributes should be for a machine-readable text to be acceptable. I really think the archives have some obligations here to nag their contributors to provide this information since if they don't get it, then it will result in multiple recipients of the archives data having to do without it or individually nag the originating author-----or maybe that is a good idea. Maybe we should gather together the names of all the people who created undocumented machine-readable text and ALL send them letters asking for the information. ========================================================================= Date: 5 February 1988, 09:13:27 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: OS/2 and the Mac ---------------------------- From elli%ikaros@husc6.BITNET (Elli Mylonas) All the discussion on OS/2 centers around comparisons of this operating system with mainframes and other higher-end machines. Background processing and a semblance of multitasking are available NOW on the Macintosh, using the Multifinder system (version 4.2). It is possible print in the background, or to download files in the background, while working away at something else in the main window. It is also possible to have more than one application open at the same time, although only one is active. I know that this requires more memory than the average Mac has, but even a memory upgrade costs less than the machines against which OS/2 is being measured (an extra 1MB for Mac + -- $175, upgrade to 2.5MB for the SE -- $460). It is surprising how fast one can come to depend on the multiple window, multiple application environment that Multifinder offers. Mac users, even those who are not expert users, start to make use of it immediately, and without realizing they are doing something fundamentally different. This is primarily due to the consistency of the Mac user interface, which consistency Multifinder adheres to. So, to answer those who say that humanists only do word processing, and do not need to do 2 things at once, all the humanists who are given the opportunity to do so make use of it, if it is not hard to learn. After all, compiling an index or pulling cross references require cpu time, when the writer just sits and waits. Furthermore, few people do *just* word processing. They have their references in a database, they may look at images or maps they have online, and they may be logged in on their local networked machine reading HUMANIST. Not to mention more mundane chores like looking up an address in their electronic phonelist, or cleaning out their files. I do not want to say that the Mac with Multifinder is the solution to everyone's computing needs, but it is available now, on an inexpensive machine. We cannot all have Suns, and we do not all have that kind of networking, so as to be able to use workstations off a central server. Elli Mylonas elli@wjh12.harvard.edu ========================================================================= Date: 5 February 1988, 10:12:29 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: File Documentation (45 lines) ---------------------------- From Bob Kraft OK, I'm ready to get serious and gather the combined wisdom of the collected HUMANISTs on what you want by way of information about a text file. This is timely, because I am in the final stages of attempting to document the materials included on the CCAT part of the new PHI/CCAT CD-ROM (see the OFFLINE 17 list). This documentation will be included with each disk -- ideally (and in the future), it would be on the CD-ROM itself, but in this instance it was not yet ready. In any event, the categories I have used are as follows: (1) Edition of the text used (if applicable), or background information about the text; (2) Encoding information -- who deserves credit for creating the electronic form and/or for making it available? (3) Coding information -- what special symbols are used, how are non-English characters represented, etc. -- often with reference to appended charts; (4) Verification status -- how well verified is the text (if known)? (5) Special Notes -- e.g. to whom should questions or corrections be addressed (where does quality control reside), are there any special issues to consider in using the text (e.g. restrictions of any sorts, relation to similar texts, future plans for revising the format). I have not thought it necessary to stipulate the size of each file (some files are anthologies -- e.g. Arabic, Sanskrit -- while others are homogeneous), although that might be useful information especially for persons who plan to offload material from the CD-ROM for individual treatment. Are there other important pieces of information you think should be included in such documentation? I should look at the format of the Rutgers Inventory to see whether the librarian's needs are covered as well. Speak now .... Bob Kraft for CCAT ========================================================================= Date: 5 February 1988, 10:24:48 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: SGML editing (23 lines) ---------------------------- From David Nash We are about to draw deep breaths and plunge into converting the Warlpiri dictionary master files to SGML. We have been inspired to do this by most of what we know about SGML. Does anyone want to talk us out of it? Has anyone experiences to share of SoftQuad's Author/Editor SGML-based software for the Macintosh? Are there any alternatives on the market? Less importantly, is ISO 8879 (on SGML) available in machine-readable form? -DGN ========================================================================= Date: 5 February 1988, 10:47:16 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Windows and rooms (36 lines) ---------------------------- From BobKraft Although I get the feeling that many people don't want to keep hearing about the IBYCUS SC -- its that special scholarly micro-workstation that has been working with CD-ROMs since 1985 (!!), among other things -- you should at least know that the SC (for "Scholarly Computer") has ten obvious "windows" (or perhaps better, "rooms") that are accessed through the number pad keys and can be used to access and work with various files conveniently. Actually there are more than 10, but the 10 are obvious. The SC does not "multi-task" in the sense of being able to run programs in each room at the same time. Only one program can be actually running, in the foreground or in the background, but the memory for each of the rooms (to the limits of available RAM) is readily accessible at a keystroke. Thus I can write my 9 different articles at the same time while using window/room 0 to pull materials off the CD-ROM. Why mention this? Because if we want to discuss what scholars think they need, and how they might want to use various types of proposed options, it is good to know what some scholars have, and to find out how their "needs" and hopes/wants change once they have what they thought they wanted. What do the IBYCUS SC users see as the next level of wants in relation to their windowing/rooming environment? Bob Kraft, CCAT ========================================================================= Date: 5 February 1988, 11:46:50 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Windows, multitasking, and programming environments (33 ll.) ---------------------------- From Randall Smith <6500rms@UCSBUXB.BITNET> I have been experimenting with Windows and XTREE PRO, trying to find a suitable environment for programming in C. I have not yet been successful in getting Windows to work smoothly, but it does not seem to be too slow, though I am running on a 12 MHz clone with a high speed hard disk. I am expecting version 2.0 shortly, and I hear that it is much faster. As far as size of screen, I am using one the super EGA cards (the Vega Deluxe) which gives me a resolution of 752x410. This is *much* better than the standard resolution and provides much more room to put things on the screen. My goal is to be able to perform a compilation according to a make file in one window and do another task or two while that compiling is continuing. Also, I am trying to get my TLG search software to run in a window. I know that this will slow it down, but I would rather have it take ten minutes during which I can use the computer for something else than five minutes during which the machine is lost to me. I will pass along more information on this if I can get it to work. Has anyone tried anything like this with Windows 386 or Desqview? By the way, XTREE PRO with a mouse and its new editor is not a bad dos manager. I recommend giving it a try. I will be happy to provide a Logitech mouse driver for it if anyone is interested. Randall Smith ========================================================================= Date: 5 February 1988, 20:56:37 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: multi-tasking (18 lines) ---------------------------- From Wayne Tosh > > Rahtz makes some very good points concerning multi-tasking and > multiple windows as he is able to realize them on his Sun > workstation. Would that we all had NOW such a large-screen > environment! My objection is to colleagues who want to spend > limited (English department) funds on small-screen 286-based > machines--who wants to do multitasking while peering through a > keyhole? ========================================================================= Date: 5 February 1988, 21:03:30 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Tennessee Williams' plays on-line? (17 lines) ---------------------------- From Rosanne Potter Does anyone have copies of The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire and/or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on-line? or know of their existence in an archive? Please respond to me at POTTER@UK.AC.OXFORD.VAX [for those outside JANET that's potter@vax.oxford.ac.uk -- W.M.] Thanks. ========================================================================= Date: 5 February 1988, 21:07:31 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: documenting texts (26 lines) ---------------------------- From Lou Burnard Just before Xmas I sent an enquiry to Humanist, requesting feedback on just what minimal information people would like to see recorded about texts in the Oxford Text Archive catalogue. I know the message didnt get lost because I happened to meet one Humanist in person a week or so later (always an inexplicable pleasure to see those acronyms fleshed out in a suit) who gave me his views using that curious old technology known as speech. Alas that represented exactly 50% of the response rate my enquiry provoked, i.e. I got one (1) other reply. What I want to know, apart from the answer to my original query, which Bob Kraft has just posed again, is (a) is the response rate to queries placed on Humanist always so low? (b) or was it a boring question? I had considered mailing an enquiry to all other enquiriers, but forbore! Lou ========================================================================= Date: 5 February 1988, 21:14:43 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: SGML for the dictionary ---------------------------- From Nancy Ide I would like to suggest that NASH at MIT consider holding off on the conversion of the dictionary to SGML. I expect they will be defining document types and ne tags for this application, and it may be that the effort will duplicate that of the ACH/ACL/ALLC Text Encoding Initiative. We will have a very large group at work on tagging schemes for dictionaries, and while this work will not be well enough along for at least 18 months to provide a concrete scheme for actual use, the wait might be worthwhile. We expect our scheme to be based on or even an extension of SGML and the AAP implementation of SGML for typesetting, and so they will get what they need, plus compatibility, without the trouble of developing the tags on their own. Nancy Ide ide@vassar ========================================================================= Date: 5 February 1988, 21:18:57 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Hardware wars (30 lines) ---------------------------- From David Graham This discussion clearly has the potential to degenerate very quickly into one of those depressing and unproductive flame wars about hardware that periodically rage through the Usenet comp.sys.* groups. [As someone recently wrote there, "Oh no, not another of those 'Your favorite microprocessor is sh*t' discussions".] Instead of flaming one another's preferences and arguing about whether or not Multifinder is 'true multitasking' (I can see that one coming), may I suggest that we listen to Willard McCarty's suggestion to re- strict the discussion to accounts of actual experience, and resist (insofar as possible) the temptation to evangelize? I can't afford a Sun either (I can't even afford a memory upgrade for my Mac), and it doesn't help matters to have the feeling that HUMANIST's Sun users are looking down their noses from a great height. One of the reasons I joined HUMANIST was that I thought we were all in this together, as Humanities people with an interest in computing, and because I thought that HUMANIST would provide a forum for some interesting discussions. So far I haven't been disappointed (though frequently reminded of my ignorance), but if we're going to waste time and bandwidth flaming each other, I'll stop reading. Am I being thin-skinned? Is this hopelessly idealistic? David Graham dgraham@mun.bitnet ========================================================================= Date: 5 February 1988, 21:21:35 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: PhD exams in Computing and the Humanities? (89 lines) ---------------------------- From Sterling Bjorndahl Here is another twist on the issue of academic credit in the Humanities for work with computers. Is it academically legitimate for a PhD student to write one of his or her exams in the general area of "Computers and blank" where 'blank' is his or her field of study? In the case I am thinking of, the topic would be something like "Computer Assisted Research and the Study of the New Testament and Christian Origins," including early Christian literature and movements. I might even be willing to broaden it further and include all of the biblical corpus. Some arguments pro: One can develop a Forschungsbericht, and in our field at any rate that seems to be a kind of magic that makes something a legitimate field of study. Admittedly this history of the investigation is not that old, but it is at least as old as is structuralism in the study of this corpus of literature - if not older! One could do a very nice job, I think, of looking at various computer-assisted projects, evaluating their methods and results, identifying diachronic changes as machines and methods became more sophisticated, and analyzing the difference that the computer made to each investigation. One could then attempt to generalize about the role of computers in this area of study, and extrapolate as to how the role will change in the future. I must admit that this is the only aspect of such an exam that I can imagine at this time. We typically have four exams in our field, each exam being four hours long and consisting of from two to four questions. Could one write for four hours on such a Forschungs- bericht? Probably not. But one would probably find that one hour is insufficient. What else could one write about? There are also very good arguments against allowing such an exam. The computer does function, after all, more like a "tool" than a "method," and we seldom allow exams in "tools." We would be unlikely to allow an exam in lexicons, say, or synopses of the Gospels. Unless: what if the student were planning to do major work, even a dissertation, in the history of the development of lexicons or synopses? It might take a lot of convincing for some people to believe that this was a worthwhile area of study, but one could look at the types of texts utilized, the priniciples of organization, the underlying philosophical perspective? I think that a case could be made for an exam on this. I have already discussed this question privately with a couple of people, and Bob Kraft has made the most eloquent statement of the issues to date. The following paragraphs are from his response to my question: If we teach graduate level courses in computing and the biblical studies, and even give examinations in those courses, why is it not legitimate to allow a doctoral exam in that area? From Bob Kraft: > If my category for the computer is that it is a "tool" in some ways > similar to typewriters, indices, concordances, scrapbooks, cards, > etc., etc., I resist focusing on it by itself, although I am open to > the idea of examining the student on the uses of research tools > (including, but not only, computers). If I see it as an "approach" > similar to archaeological method, then it would seem to be an > appropriate subject in itself. In between these two models might fall > the "library science" model, which encompasses a special set of tools > in a fieldwork environment. Would I permit a PhD exam on library > methodology? I would hesitate, despite the fact that there are > courses, programs, etc. > > Yes, we teach graduate level courses in humanistic computing, and > there are examinations in them. We also have courses in archaeological > methods. And there are courses and programs in library science. I > don't think that fact is determinative of what is appropriate to a PhD > exam. The issue that I need to explicate is why I am not very > uncomfortable about the archaeology model. Partly because discussion > of "archaeological method" has developed in a partially > confrontational context vis-a-vis "historical-philological method," in > a way that clearly required exposure of assumptions, justifications > for valuation of certain types of evidence, etc. It involves more than > knowledge of how to use a tool or set of tools efficiently (although > this "more" is not necessarily inherent in the category!). I'm not > sure that, in isolation, a similar case can be made for "computer > methodology," but I am open to being persuaded. Finally, I wonder if this would be a non-issue if this were an information science PhD rather than a New Testament/Christian Origins PhD? Someone studying computers _per se_ could very well be able to examine their application in a particular field of the humanities. Does this make a difference? Am I really asking a cross-disciplinary question? Sterling Bjornahl ========================================================================= Date: 5 February 1988, 21:25:58 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: SGML standard document: ref. and ordering info. (22 lines) ---------------------------- From David Durand In response to number of requests, here is the reference for the SGML standard document: American National Standards Institute. "Information Processing -- Text and Office Systems -- Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)" ISO 8879-1986, ANSI, New York, 1986. I called them in New York (at: (212)-354-3300) and got the following ordering information: It is very important that you mention that you want document number ISO 8879-1986. Apparently the name may not be sufficient. $58.00 -- + 6.00 shipping and Handling Mail to: ANSI Attn: Sales Department. 1430 Broadway New York, NY 10018 ========================================================================= Date: 5 February 1988, 21:49:45 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Public-domain UNIX relational database program? (41 lines) A colleague in Toronto, Frank Davey (English, York), is looking for a relational database program in the public domain. Any suggestions would be very welcome. In the following he describes the intended application. Willard McCarty ---------------------------------- From Frank Davey We are looking for a programme that will let us compile bibliographic entries for searches that will be useful for research into the history of Canadian publishing as an institution. We'd like to be able to search for combinations of key fields, to answer questions such as between 1900 and 1914, what publishers published fiction by women, or between 1860 and 1900, what cities were the places of publication for 1st books of poetry. On the other hand, we don't want necessarily to have to establish in advance the sorts of questions we want to be able to ask, and we'd like to be able to add fields (such as which book -- first, second, etc. -- an item represents in a writer's career) if we hadn't thought of it first time around. That feature would be particularly useful if a graduate student wanted to modify the database slightly so that it could answer a new set of research questions. My understanding is that a relational database would allow one to do exactly this, as well as allow an immense variety of utterly different projects. A useful feature of the Empress database programme is that it can be output through the Standard Generalized Markup codes that Softquad is developing for Apple (I think that Mac programme is called Author/Editor). From Frank Davey ========================================================================= Date: 6 February 1988, 16:12:46 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: mark-up (37 lines) ---------------------------- From Mark Olsen Other than a minimal amount of textual identification -- titles, editions, etc. -- coding of texts will depend on the applications and intentions of the collector. Rather than impose a SGML or some such thing why not have a header that clearly identifies each element of codes being used. I have several texts from the Oxford Archive that have extensive codes with no explanation of what they mean or how they were determined. This could be appended to the data file as part of the contributed text. I suspect that we gather text for the immediate application at hand -- I know I work that way -- without realizing that someone 20 years later needs some footprint to follow the trail. The general rule might be that if the character did NOT appear in the original printed edition or mss, then it is a code that must be defined. That defintion should form the bulk of a header. The poor response rate from HUMANISTS recently lamented by Lou Burnard and Bob Kraft might be due to the nature of e-mail. If I can't fire off a quick response, I file the note, to be lost forever in an ever growing HUMANIST NOTEBOOK. Stored there, out of the way, they do not form an annoying pile which threatens to overwhelm my desk. Free from the threat of avalanche, I can forget the with the good faith that I will get to it "real soon now." With a clear desk and a clean conscience, I continue on my way, safe in the knowledge that "out of sight is truly out of mind." Mark ========================================================================= Date: 6 February 1988, 16:13:45 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Document Characteristics (63 lines) ---------------------------- From amsler@flash.bellcore.com (Robert Amsler) Minimally the description should make it possible to identify exactly what material was used as the source of keyboarded data such that someone else will be able to find another (or, if the source was unique, the specific) copy of the source to recheck the input for accuracy. Thus, the first goal is ``How can I tell someone where to check my data against the original from which it was made''. The next goal is to describe those attributes which will enable someone to appreciate how the data was captured. To describe the methods by which it was put down in the computer. Specifically, what transliterations were used; what aspects of the original were not captured (e.g. original hyphenation, orginal page boundaries, etc.); whether data is as-is or has been corrected in some way for possible abberations in the original (e.g. black smudge in printing obscured letters here, but context implies it said ...; misspelling or incorrect numbers corrected by (a) checking with dictionary or (b) through incorporating errata notes from material into the copy, etc.); method by which disjoint parts of materials were entered (e.g. footnotes entered all in special footnote file, or entered at point at which footnote number appeared in text; or entered at bottoms of each page, etc.; physical arrangement of text which was captured vs. which were not--i.e. how is the blank space in the original document being dealt with (a problem here is that original text with variable width letters must be distorted in some fashion to be keyboarded on computers with only fixed-width character displays). What is being done to represent different fonts (both fontsize and italic/bold/small-caps/Roman, etc.) Thus, the goal here is to answer the question ``How can I tell someone what steps to follow once they find the original source material to result in an exact matching copy of this machine-readable file should they also accurately type it in'' A sub-part of this last answer should include how to distinguish the original source material from any contributions of the data enterer, that is--if the data enterer created what business folks are fond of calling ``added value'' by further clarifying the text in some way (e.g. adding line/verse/chapter/etc. numbers; adding definitions from another work; providing translations of foreign quotes, or even interpreting the meaning, etc. of the material--this added value should be capable of being distinguished from the original such that the original text and the added material could be separated again.) Added value sources, where such exist, should also be identified as in the first step, and where needed, their method of capture itself should be described as in the second step (this forming a type of recursion that hopefully finishes). ========================================================================= Date: 6 February 1988, 16:16:25 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Ph.D. in humanities computing (29 lines) ---------------------------- From Norman Zacour Given what I have seen so far, I daresay that someone will soon ask to do a Ph.D on the use of computers in medieval historical research. Why should I find such an idea uncomfortable? We teach medieval history; we teach a great deal about computers; we want our medievalists to apply the use of computers to their scholarship as much as possible; and finally, such a study might be quite interesting in itself. But is it worth a Ph.D? Does any interesting book describing the work of academics warrant the doctorate? I suspect that I find all this problematical precisely because I think of the doctorate as a disciplinary qualification, and while I am used to disciplines such as computer science and medieval history, there is no point in pretending that the question of historians' using computers is in itself a disciplinary qualification. It's a great idea, and I hope that we will soon have some good works on the manner in which computers have stimulated scholarship and modified techniques of study and research. This is the kind of thing that practictioners write, not students. But on the other hand, when I see what we accept now... Norman Zacour@Utorepas ========================================================================= Date: 6 February 1988, 16:33:08 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: A colloque (78 lines) ---------------------------- From Robert Gauthier This year,from July .7th to July . 13th, the theme of the Colloque international d'Albi, in the south of France will be Pictures and Texts. Workshops on visual semiotics( French B. D.,films,posters...)and textual analysis will be scheduled in the morning and early afternoon. A daily conference will take place in the late afternoon. The trend of the whole colloque will be to link formal analysis with either current ideologies and axiologies or psychic human traits. Didactical aspects will not be neglected and the inter- disciplinary approach will be sustained by the participation of semioticians, psychologists, linguists, philosophers , sociologists and communication experts. Among others, world-known specialists like Courtes J., Ducrot O...have announced their participation. FRTOU71 Le Colloque d'Albi se propose de mettre l'accent sur l'etude de l'image, et par dela, de l'imaginaire. Etant donne l'importance croissante du visuel - dans notre vecu individuel et social - il convient de s'interroger sur son fonctionnement et sur sa fonction dans notre univers socio-culturel. Meme si aucune parole ne l'accompagne l'image est un texte a lire dont la signification est fonction de regles particulieres. Comme texte l'image est evidemment le support de valeurs : elle n'est jamais que pretexte a une axiologie determinee ; elle vise a convaincre au dela de ce qu'elle represente. Inversement le texte se presente souvent de maniere imagee au point de produire un effet de sens "realite". Nous voici alors au point de depart de l'imaginaire, de l'onirique : inventivite sans fin des images, avec ou sans paroles. Notre objectif sera de proposer des strategies pedagogiques utilisables a l'ecole et au lycee, issues de la confrontation entre les theories scientifiques et les demarches pratiques des enseignants. On s'appuiera sur l'etude linguistique et litteraire de textes (poemes, nouvelles, textes administratifs, etcI), de messages audio-visuels (productions cinematographiques, publicitaires, illustrations, bandes dessinees, etcI) de maniere a construire des systemes de valeurs tels qu'ils peuvent se degager par l'analyse semantique. Le theme choisi permettra un travail de collaboration entre linguistes, litteraires, philosophes, historiens, sociologues et specialistes de la communication. Dans des ateliers on analysera le texte et l'image, on etudiera notamment "le personnage" dans le recit comme lieu d'investissement (valeurs, ideologies, fantasmatiqueI). On s'interrogera sur les rapports entre l'environnement culturel actuel et les pre-requis exiges pour la comprehension des textes. Dans le but d'aider les eleves a preparer l'epreuve du baccalaureat, on reflechira au theme en question dans le cadre de l'exercice dit de "groupement de texte", a partir de l'exemple des descriptions litteraires ; etcI En resume, le but poursuivi est de degager des outils d'analyse a la fois pour le texte et pour l'image. Les specialistes de l'image pourront utiliser les ressources offertes par le Musee TOULOUSE-LAUTRE d'Albi et ses expositions temporaires. Participation Form to be sent to: G. MAURAN 19 rue du Col du Puymorens 31240 L'UNION France NAME.................................... ................. Fees : 300F (students : 100F) ADDRESS................................. ............. Fees+lunch: 550F/350 PROFESSION.............................. ............ Fees+1/2 Board: 900/700 TEL..................................... .................... " + Full Board:1150F/950 Rooms in Guest House 12 rue de la Republique -ALBI Guests may arrive on Wednesday from 6 p.m. You will be met at the station Time of arrival................................. Do you want reduced train-fare................. Children holiday-center: lunch and tea : 300 .................................... ========================================================================= Date: 6 February 1988, 16:39:41 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Preparing electronic manuscripts (28 lines) ---------------------------- From Tom Benson 814-238-5277 This is a question about manuscript presention and text editing/formatting, rather than about research per se. As such, it may be too elementary for this list, and if so, my apologies. I am preparing a book-length manuscript for a publisher who has asked that it be prepared in machine-readable form according to the markup system of the University of Chicago Press's GUIDE TO PREPARING ELECTRONIC MANUSCRIPTS. The explanation of what the text should look like is straightforward enough, but it results, if I understand it, in a situation where the only text that can be printed out is a marked-up one--which is clumsy to read, at the very least. Is there a reasonable way to prepare such a text so that one would have a form marked up as the Press advises and at the same time a "normal" looking text for reading, reviewing, and revising? The two manuscript preparation systems to which I have easiest access are XEDIT and SCRIPT on the university's mainframe VM/CMS system, and DW4 on an IBM PC. If anyone out there has experience working with the Chicago format, I'd be grateful for suggestions--including the suggestion that I should just go ahead and do it their way and not worry about having "normal" looking output at any stage before the final printed book. Tom Benson Penn State University T3B@PSUVM ========================================================================= Date: 6 February 1988, 23:08:16 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Who uses CD-ROMs? ---------------------------- From David Nash Beryl T. Atkins (Collins Publishers, 11 South Street, Lewes, Sussex, England BN7 2BT) cannot receive HUMANIST at the moment, and would like to ask you all a question: "What I want to ask them is: how many of them actually use CD ROMs in their daily work & research? [Collins] are hesitating about CD ROM publication of concordances because they don't believe enough people use CD ROMs. And they say, rightly, that one CD ROM drive in the University library isn't going to make people in departments buy their own research material." I would prefer that you reply to MCCARTY@UTOREPAS.bitnet rather than me directly, but either way I'll amalgamate replies and pass them on to Atkins. -DGN ========================================================================= Date: 6 February 1988, 23:10:07 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: SGML and word processors (29 lines) ---------------------------- From goer@sophist.uchicago.edu(Richard Goerwitz) It shouldn't be too hard to get just about any word processor to output SGML or U of Chicago or whatever marked text, as long as one is willing to create an appropriate printer table. Nota Bene printer tables are pretty easy to cus- tomize. In fact, I've customized my NB 2.0 so that it outputs Hebrew, Greek, and Syriac - which turned out to be an easier job than I had anticipated. I would assume that any major word-processor would be sufficiently customizable that one could have it output SGML markers rather than printer codes. Really, though, shouldn't the makers of major academic word processors create SGML, UofC, and other appropriate tables for us? Or is such a suggestion a bit premature? Richard Goerwitz ========================================================================= Date: 6 February 1988, 23:11:51 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Re: Preparing electronic mss. (28 lines) ---------------------------- From dow@husc6.BITNET (Dominik Wujastyk) I have recently changed to XyWrite II plus precisely because the underlying text file is very close indeed in format to the type of markup that the Chicago guide recommends. At the interface level, XyWrite is as polished as any major word processor. Footnotes are hidden, underlining and bold show as such on the screen, etc, etc. It is also fast and programmable. Dominik ========================================================================= Date: 6 February 1988, 23:17:56 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Re: Preparing electronic mss. (51 lines) ---------------------------- From Allen H. Renear Tom, you should not let your publisher bully you into text processing practices with which you are uncomfortable or which do not support you as an author. Many of us have argued in many places for the AAP/SGML style tags presented the Chicago Guide -- but the last thing such tags should be is a burden on the author. Descriptive markup is a fundamentally correct approach to text processing: it should simplify and enhance *all* aspects of scholarly writing and publishing. First, talk to your publisher about exactly how they plan to process your tagged manuscript. It may turn out that they only want to get a plain ascii file with as much descriptive markup as possible. In that case you should be able to use Script GML. This will allow you to get nicely formatted copy for proofing and good support from your computer center. I suspect this is the situation. I always demand descriptive markup for typesetting projects -- but it makes less difference to me whether the tags are GML, Scribe, troff -ms, TEX, AAP or homegrown, as long as they describe the editorial objects of the document rather than specify formatting procedures. But if your publisher says that they really must have the tags described in the Chicago Guide you still have several options available. For instance, you can define Script macros that parallel the Chicago Guide tags, have each one end in a ">", and then use Script's ".dc" command to change the control word indicator to "<". Presto, your source file will have Chicago's AAP/SGML style tags and yet can be formatted by the Script formatter. You should have your Computer Center help you with this; it's their job. (I'm assuming your Script is Waterloo Script). In any case you will be using a general editor (Xedit) to prepare the files. This leaves something to be desired of course, but that's where we are today. For the direction in which text processing should be moving look at Softquad's Author/Editor. This is an AAP/SGML based editor for the Mac. I thought this much of my reply to Tom would be of general interest to the list. Anyone who wants further details should contact me directly. Allen Renear Computing and Information Services Brown University Bitnet: ALLEN@BROWNVM ========================================================================= Date: 7 February 1988, 14:41:41 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Use of CD-ROMs Beryl Atkins has asked, "how many of them actually use CD ROMs in their daily work & research? [Collins] are hesitating about CD ROM publication of concordances because they don't believe enough people use CD ROMs. And they say, rightly, that one CD ROM drive in the University library isn't going to make people in departments buy their own research material." From our point of view as researchers, I suspect that we almost unanimously want Collins and others to produce the CD-ROMs despite the fact that very few now use the technology "daily", so that we can make up our minds whether or not to buy the readers and disks. After all, our private and departmental funds are very limited, and few of us will put out the cash unless we can be sure that we'll make significant use of this technology. Because they earn their living at some peril, however, the publishers want us to clamour for CD-ROM publishing so that they can minimize their risks. So, how can we answer Beryl's question? I suggest that we say (1) what CD-ROMs we would buy if we already had readers, and (2) what minimum selection of CD-ROMs would drive us to buy a reader. This is my list: (1) desirable CD-ROMs (a) the CCAT/PHI disk (soon available; see OFFLINE 17) (b) the New OED (when available & depending on software provided) (c) the TLG (if I didn't already have access to an Ibycus & the TLG in my office) (d) the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (from the PHI), when it becomes available (e) a disk of 16th & esp. 17th cent. English lit. (2) minimum selection (a) & (e), or better (a), (d) & (e) None of the above, I'd guess, are likely to be published by Collins, so this reply may not encourage them. I have great difficulty, however, imagining what I would use on CD-ROM that I don't use regularly in any form because it's not available electronically. Willard McCarty mccarty@utorepas.bitnet ========================================================================= Date: 7 February 1988, 19:16:30 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Preparing electronic mss. ---------------------------- From dow@husc6.BITNET (Dominik Wujastyk) While we are on this subject, I have just been given _Goedel, Escher and Bach_ which was apparently produced by the author himself using a text processor called TV-Edit. Anyone heard of it? Dominik ========================================================================= Date: 7 February 1988, 19:21:47 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: CD-ROMs (41 lines) ---------------------------- From Norman Zacour [The following was sent to me as a private message; I'm submitting it to HUMANIST with the author's blessing and with a few very minor changes. -- W.M.] For what it is worth, I do not use, I have not used in the past, nor shall I ever use in the future, CD-ROMs. When libraries have the machinery installed, why bother duplicating everything at home? I am assuming that the great advantage to the scholar is the rapidity of access of large reference works - dictionaries, concordances, and the like. Have you counted recently the number of such references you consult in a year? How about 15 for a good guess? Is the expenditure worth it? I have at my fingertips dozens of language dictionaries, bibles, bible concordances, and medieval reference works in canon law etc etc that won't get CD-ROMMED in my lifetime. But the real point is that I won't get around to consulting most of them in my lifetime either. Beyond about a dozen helps that I lean on extensively (all of which I have in my office) I consult other such works only very occasionally. [Do you know about] the Domesday project, an extensive project undertaken by the BBC a couple of years ago, now on CD-ROMs? It [is] quite breathtaking, and as an aid to teaching school-children about England through the medium of pictures and graphs it's unbeatable. As an aid to scholarship, it's a bust. Nevertheless, it is possible that many people will buy CD-ROM machines for their home for uses other than scholarship (my colleague John Benton, of Cal Tech, for example - they are wonderful for movies) who would then use them as aids to scholarship also. How extensive that kind of market would be is anybody's guess. ========================================================================= Date: 7 February 1988, 19:30:46 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: CD-ROM use (22 lines) ---------------------------- From Mark Olsen The Humanities Computing Facility is currently in the process of purchasing two CD-ROM players in order to experiment with the technology and access material that comes online in future. The biggest problem I see is getting university administrations to catch up to the technology. Budget requests etc. take time. The ASU library has a dozen laser disc installations running iwth PCs devoted to a couple of information services. These are not 4.5 inch disks, but that is only because the services they subsrcibe to have not converted to CD format. From personal experience, it is almost impossible to get on these systems during weekdays ... they are very popular. Mark ========================================================================= Date: 7 February 1988, 19:35:26 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Who uses CD-ROMs? ---------------------------- From Sterling Bjorndahl I do. The Institute for Antiquity and Christianity has two Ibycus micros with the TLG texts - and we will get the PHI and CCAT CD's too. I would say there are a half dozen of us who use the CD regularly, with a few more occasional users. Sterling ========================================================================= Date: 8 February 1988, 08:58:22 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: CD-ROM use (28 lines) ---------------------------- From Randall Smith <6500rms@UCSBUXB.BITNET> This is a reply to David Nash's question of behalf of Beryl T. Atkins concerning CD-ROM use. The Classics Department at University of California at Santa Barbara has its own CD-ROM system, and we use it regularly to do text searches on TLG materials. We also plan to obtain Latin texts on CD as soon as they are available, and since we have the equipment, we would be interested in other items, such as journals, book collections, etc., which might become available on CD's, as long as the price is reasonable. Also, several members of the Classics Department have purchased computers with an eye to purchasing CD units as soon as the necessary CD's containing Greek and Latin text are available for home use. As far as we are concerned, there is plenty of interest in CD's, as long as the price is kept reasonable. Randall M. Smith ========================================================================= Date: 8 February 1988, 16:00:17 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: CD-ROM query (63 lines) ---------------------------- From (M.J. CONNOLLY [Slavic/Eastern]) I speak only from the Macintosh world, where the release of two important products (9 March?) will rapidly change the CD-ROM scene and the size of the prospective audience: CD-ROM drives and driver software, and the new version of HyperCard (to handle CD-ROM files currently inaccessible to version 1.0.1). One reasonably expects the Microsoft Bookshelf to run in the Macintosh environment then (announcement perhaps also to come in early March) and also the OED. Some large corporations, of course, have not waited, and these produce their own drivers and discs for internal use. Databases like 4th Dimension should have no difficulty with CD-ROM, once the appropriate driver is in the System folder. I see a market that will take off very soon. We have been tinkering with CD-ROM for our new Instructional Development Lab, but await the 'official' releases and know that there are a number of vendors out there ready to pull the wraps off once the Apple( (617)552-3912 cnnmj@bcvax3.bitnet ========================================================================= Date: 8 February 1988, 19:15:32 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: OS/2 (35 lines) ---------------------------- From Dan Church Given the fact that most of us don't seem to have regular access to mainframes or advanced workstations, most of the discussion of OS/2 and multi-tasking along the lines of "I can already do that on my... [Fill in the blank with the name of your favorite mini or mainframe.]" appears to me to be beside the major point. Even granted that a Macintosh with enough memory and MULTIFINDER can already do most of what we would like to be able to do with OS/2, most of us who use PC's or clones can't afford to junk them and run out to buy an SE. So what about us? I suggest that we start by reading the editorial in the latest (January/February 1988) issue of _Turbo Technix_, the new technical magazine put out by Borland and sent free to anyone who has purchased a Borland product. The editorial by Jeff Duntemann entitled "DOS, The Understood" argues that DOS will outlast OS/2 because a) it can be made to fake most of OS/2's features seamlessly, b) OS/2 was designed primarily for the 80286, a "dead-end processor", c) a 386 machine with DOS and programs such as WINDOWS/386 or PC MOS-386 is already everything OS/2 claims to be, and d) we will never be able to do as much with OS/2 as with DOS because it is designed around a kernel that is a black box highly resistant to probing by hackers. This editorial strikes me as one of the most sensible discussions of the supposed advantages of OS/2 I've read so far. I would have quoted the whole thing for you if it hadn't appeared on the same page as the warning that no part of the magazine may be reproduced without permission. But I'd be willing to bet that you could get a reprint of it by writing to Borland Communications, 4585 Scotts Valley Drive, Scotts Valley, CA 95066, U.S.A. ========================================================================= Date: 8 February 1988, 20:07:06 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: documenting texts (36 lines) ---------------------------- From Lou Burnard 1. Mark Olsen rightly complains that the texts he received from the Text Archive were inadequately documented. Alas, he does not say whether or not he intends, having (presumably) gone to the trouble of identifying what all those mysterious tags actually represent, to pass the information back to us... 2. Such information should (in theory) be available from the depositor of the text. In this connexion, may I ask what the general feeling is about publishing names and address of depositors? We have this information, necessarily, for all A and X category texts, but it is not in the catalogue so as to save space. Should it be? Should we also indicate a (possibly many years out of date) contact address for all U category texts? How do actual or potential depositors feel about this? How do actual or potential punters feel? 3. I have just finished a document (about 10 pages) which describes in some detail the various english language dictionaries available from the text archive. Please send a note to archive@uk.ac.oxford.vax if you would like a copy. Lou Burnard Oxford Text Archive P.S. Sorry Rosanne, we're fresh out of Tennessee Williams. Would Tom Stoppard do? ========================================================================= Date: 8 February 1988, 20:09:41 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Dan Brink's tour (18 lines) ---------------------------- From Dan Brink I am planning an eastern tour to check out computer conferencing systems in early April. NJI, Guelph, UMich are on the tour so far, and maybe NYIT. Any suggestions of other good places to try to visit would be appreicated. *****P L E A S E R E S P O N D T O Dan Brink ATDXB@ASUACAD *****& N O T T O H U M A N I S T ========================================================================= Date: 8 February 1988, 20:16:44 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Producing GML markup with Xedit (34 lines) ---------------------------- From Michael Sperberg-McQueen In addition to the good suggestions of Allen Renear, it should also be mentioned that Waterloo GML can also be modified in the two ways salient for Tom Benson's problem: the tags defined by the U of C style can be defined, as GML tags, and added to the set of GML tags provided by Waterloo, and (if the publisher thinks it important, or the author finds it makes the file easier to read) '<' and '>' can be used as tag delimiters instead of ':' and '.'. The advantages of adding new GML tags instead of new Script macros are that you can use existing Waterloo tags and their underlying macros where appropriate, and you can use GML tags in the middle of a line instead of only in column 1, which makes it easier to have a clean, readable input file. The consultants on your CMS system ought, as Allen Renear suggests, to help you with the adaptations. They may, however, need to be told to look at the .GT and .GA control words in the reference manual to see how to define new GML tags and map them either to existing Script macros or to ones you and they define, and to change the GML delimiters with ".DC GML <;.DC MCS >" -- even good Script consultants may not know these ins and outs of GML. Michael Sperberg-McQueen, University of Illinois at Chicago ========================================================================= Date: 8 February 1988, 20:22:25 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: CD-ROMS & Players (30 lines) ---------------------------- From Dr Abigail Ann Young Subject: CD-ROMS & Players My attitude to this is similar, I think, to what Norman Zacour said earlier. I tend to look on the CD's themselves and the equipment necessary to use them as something a library, rather than an individual, would acquire. I use the Thesuarus Linguae Latinae, and DuCange's Lexicon of Mediaeval Latin, but I don't own them: the Library has them readily available, and if occasionally I have to wait for a few minutes because someone else is using a volume I want to consult, well, it's just not that great a hardship! I also consult the PG and PL of Migne, and the more modern critical editions of ancient and mediaeval church fathers and teachers in the library, except for a few volume(s) of authors I regularly work with. I can no more imagine buying a CD-ROM of the TLL for myself than I can imagine buying the printed TLL for myself, but I think that that sort of thing ought to be available in the University Library System on CD-ROM as well as in print: it seems to be the librarians' dream medium, no matter how many people use it, the "book" can't be hurt! ========================================================================= Date: 8 February 1988, 20:25:23 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Using CD-ROM for textual research (43 lines) ---------------------------- From Robin C. Cover In response to the inquiry of David Nash on the use and popularity of CD-ROM's, I would suggest (at least) that he find out how many IBYCUS micro-computers there are in use. Even if used institutionally, they constitute available drives that could be used with other CD-ROM disks. Secondly, I would add that our institution has done some market research concerning the potential popularity of CD-ROM drives *provided that* tantilizing software and databases were available. It was determined that CD-ROM is a viable market (we can get OEM prices for close to $400, and the prices will probably drop). So, we are planning a hypertext CD-ROM product for biblical studies, the first version of which is due (maybe) late this year. In response to Norman Zacour, who says he will never buy a personal CD-ROM unit, and could not really conceive of its use: would you be seduced if we could provide you with original biblical texts linked by hot-key to the major lexica, grammars (etc) together with programs to do interactive concording on the texts, and searching (grep/Boolean) of these texts to boot? Finally, the only dark cloud I see with respect to CD-ROM is the advent of read/write optical-magnetic disk, which already is available. It has 30 millisecond disk access time, which is a considerable improvement over the 500 millisecond time of CD-ROM, and hinders performance. If these drives drop to within the $1000 range during the next year or so, I think many of us would want to support this medium rather than CD-ROM; the removable (90 megabyte, 650 megabyte) disks would be optimal for our other storage problems as well. Professor Robin C. Cover ZRCC1001@SMUVM1.bitnet ========================================================================= Date: 8 February 1988, 20:27:32 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Text encoding initiative (16 lines) ---------------------------- From Sebastian Rahtz Nancy Ide's throwaway remark "even an extension of SGML" fills me with horror. Isnt SGMl complicated enough for you text-encoding people? Why create something non-standard for humanists, why not go with the crowd NOW. I say good luck to the dictionary chap that wanted to use SGML. Much as I hate S*, its not that bad ========================================================================= Date: 8 February 1988, 20:29:17 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: CD-ROM and videodisk (26 lines) ---------------------------- From Randall Jones Norman Zacour's recent note about the Doomsday Project has prompted me to offer a clarification concerning a misconception that apparently exists among some of us. The Doomsday project is N O T on CD-ROM, rather is is on videodisc, a medium that is similar to CD-ROM only in that it is optical storage that uses laser technology. Videodisc stores analog video images and can also store digital information, but for most applications the video material what is important. There are digital motion video programs now available, but they are still quite experimental and very expensive. Randall Jones Humanities Research Center 3060 JKHB Brigham Young University Provo, Utah 84602 ========================================================================= Date: 8 February 1988, 20:42:03 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: The Sun also rises on HUMANIST (22 lines) ---------------------------- From Sebastian Rahtz David Graham feels that Sun users are looking down on him, and urges us not to start a hardware war on HUMANIST. Yes, I agree! But its not "evangelizing" to say that multiple tasks in multiple *visible* windows is an excellent working environment. I don't think our Sun is an expensive luxury, any more that an Ibycus would be if we could afford it ..... Why don;t you declare the correspondence on multi-tasking over, Willard? Sebastian Rahtz ========================================================================= Date: 8 February 1988, 20:43:34 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: PhD exams in computing ---------------------------- From Sebastian Rahtz I would have thought that the idea of a "computer methodology" was a non-starter; after all, the virtue of the computer is that it is a *general purpose* tool. Could the exam subject not be "a quantitative approach to New Testament studies", making it comparable to "structuralist", "Marxist" etc approaches? If quantification is the issue addressed by these NT 'n' computing courses referred to. We are about to start an MSc course in Archaeological Computing here; the punters will do the programming/database/graphics sorts of things you might expect. I also have a friend whose PhD revolves around a statistical approach to Roman pottery. I'd hate to defend her doing a PhD on "programming in archaeology" though. Sebastian Rahtz ========================================================================= Date: 8 February 1988, 20:45:07 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Relational database software in the public domain ---------------------------- From Sebastian Rahtz I sympathise with the request for a PD database, but, really, you cannot expect to get EVERYTHING for free! People will recommend PC-FILE (supposed to be good stuff) for a PC, but wouldn't it be worth spending a few 100 [pounds,dollars] on a commercial product with support and a manual, if its going to be used a lot? Creating SGML-conformant output shouldn't be hard from any reputable database. But if you are on a mainframe, what about Famulus77? Its not PD, but its cheap; its not relational but it would do what you asked for? Lou Burnard will tell you all about it on request, I am sure. As an example of a commercial product, PC-Ingres cost us 250 pounds for a site license. OK, so it may not be appropriate, but for that kind of money for the whole site, going outside PD isn't impossible. (That was an academic price, mind you!) Sebastian Rahtz ========================================================================= Date: 8 February 1988, 20:46:44 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Texts? ---------------------------- From Mark Olsen I have a request for the Consolatione de philosophiae by Boethius. The user would be particularly interested in the Loeb edition, (1952?). Any information on this would be greatly appreciated. If we can not find it, we might have to scan it. Thanks Mark ========================================================================= Date: 8 February 1988, 20:49:40 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: SGML, markup, and texts (106 lines) ---------------------------- From Stephen DeRose Well, I've been watching HUMANIST with interest for some time, and I guess it's time to dive in. First, on the issue of data format and headers: SGML provides the features I have so far seen requested on HUMANIST. An SGML file is pure ASCII, and contains text, tags, and entities. Tags are mnemonic names for parts of the text, marked off by angle brackets (e.g., "

"for paragaph). Entities name things that can't otherwise be coded in straight ASCII (perhaps "ℵ"). That's all there need be to SGML, unless you want to get fancy. A "prolog" in a well-defined format defines the document's particular tag-set, entities, and any non-default syntax. Because it is all printable characters, you don't lose data going through mailers, dealing with IBM mainframes, etc. Because the tags are descriptive rather than procedural, you need not encode the specifics of your word-processor, printer, current style sheet, display characteristics, etc. etc. A block quote is still a block quote regardless of any of these factors. Also, because the tags are mnemonic and pure ASCII, even with *no* word-processor a human can read an SGML file. The objections I hear to SGML are usually: 1) "It doesn't have the tags I need." This shows a widespread misunderstanding of SGML. SGML is not a tag-set at all, but a way of *specifying* tag-sets, entity-names, and their syntax. A well-known tag-set called "AAP" (for it is from the American Association of Publishers) is *one* instance of an SGML-conforming tag-set; but saying it "is" SGML is like saying that a particular user program "is" Pascal. 2) "It takes up too much space." But just about any mnemonic for (say) paragraph is sure to be shorter than 2 RETURNs and 5 spaces, or procedural commands to skip line and change the indentation level, etc., etc. One can also define abbreviations (say, for "ℵ"), gaining the brevity of transliteration without losing the other advantages, all within the easy part of the SGML standard. So, for example, if one is doing a lot of Hebrew, one defines a "" tag, within the scope of which a defined transliteration scheme is used. 3) "Typing pointy brackets and mnemonics is a pain." SGML says nothing whatsoever about what you have to type. Any word-processor with "style sheets" at least allows SGML-like mnemonic descriptors -- and how you specify them is as varied as the programs themselves. Also, it seems obvious that even *typing* a mnemonic is less pain than the usual task of translating the mnemonic into a long series of formatting codes which are specific to some particular word processor. 4) "Slashes (or whatever) are better than pointy brackets." This is of course insignificant. One can change the default, but in any case the choice of tag punctuation is a trivial matter. Globally changing "

" to ":p." is a problem of a very different magnitude from locating all paragraphs given only a file with miscellaneous carriage returns and spaces, some of which sometimes happen to mark paragraphs. It's the difference between artificial intelligence and a text-editor "change" command. 5) "SGML isn't WYSYWYG". This is simply false; just as with typing, the display can be anything. MS Word using style sheets (which is a very poor but real example of a descriptive tagging system) is no less "WYSIWYG" than MS Word using (shudder!) rote formatting all the time. Of course, the true, ultimate "WYSIWYG" word-processor is the pencil. 6) "SGML isn't efficient enough for purpose X." Usually, X is some specialized kind of information retrieval. One must consider Fisher's Fundamental Theorom from Genetics: "the better adapted a system is to a particular environment, the less adaptable it is to new environments." To draw an analogy from my own domain, one can always design a specialized grammatical theory for a single language, which is more effective for that language than any of the general theories. But linguists are trained to avoid this, because such analysis usually contributes nothing to the work of students of other languages. It is true also in Computer Science: if one optimizes a program for one machine/language/ task, it will be vastly more difficult to adapt it for a new of extended one. An SGML file can be trivially converted to other forms for special purposes. Consider that the SGML version of the entire OED can be searched in a small number of seconds. On another topic, it's interesting to watch the multi-tasking debate. There is so much about OS-2 and Windows. Discussions with Microsoft indicate it has little consciousness of the problems of writing systems. Even accents are not handled adequately. Someone called the Mac "silly" -- that's fine for him, but since I can do almost everything I want (and almost everything I have heard Humanists and HUMANIST's express desire for) in a multitude of languages, off- the-shelf, with *any* monitor and *any* video card, with standard commercial software on the Mac, in an interface style that IBM is working hard to copy, I'm willing to use a "silly" machine. Steven J. DeRose Brown University and the Summer Institute of Linguistics D106GFS at UTARLVM1.bitnet ========================================================================= Date: 8 February 1988, 20:53:21 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: CD Rom caveat ---------------------------- From Sterling Bjorndahl M.J. Connolly's enthusiastic response about cd/rom, cd/i, etc., reminded me of a caveat. I raised this on humanist some time ago already and aroused zero response. Warning: readable/writeable optical media are being developed. Some of these use laser-magnetic technology; others use laser-phase change technology, and there are yet other technologies being investigated. My own feeling is that this will send the read-only media the way of the eight-track audio cartridge. ROM works fine for the short and medium term, and I'm very glad I have access to it, and I expect to see more of it now that it is a practical and functioning technology. However, if I were a major commercial publisher I would think twice about investing my own money *heavily* in the read only technologies. If the hardware developers can get the read/write heads to move fast enough (for I read that this is a major design problem at this point), we may all have 500MB drives hooked up to our micros as a matter of course, and these may be as easy to use as modern floppies (if I understand the technology correctly). At that point we won't need or want the ROM devices, unless perhaps we are running a text archive. Sterling Bjorndahl BJORNDAS@CLARGRAD.BITNET ========================================================================= Date: 9 February 1988, 00:03:55 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Seductive biblical hot keys for that 5% (27 lines) ---------------------------- From Norman Zacour To Robin Cover and his seductive biblical hot keys I can only respond with Luke 4:5-8. With a CD Rom he should have no trouble finding it. Seriously, however, the technology available for rapid and thorough consultation of reference works is quite admirable, and will become more so; its role, however, is the role that the indices of scriptoria, archives, and libraries played in the past. They are really institutional in nature, useful - indeed essential - in their place. But since I spend about 95% of my working time reading, thinking, writing and swearing, and only 5% (if indeed that) looking things up, I cannot get excited about moving a proxy library into my apartment. I think that what I'm talking about is a sense of proportion. I also have a sneaking suspicion, somewhat confirmed by Cover's last paragraph, that the latest obsession can quickly become the latest obsolescence, unavoidable in this day and age, perhaps, but preferably to be borne at the institutional level. ========================================================================= Date: 9 February 1988, 00:09:24 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: SGML/AAP tag text processing today (36 lines) ---------------------------- From Allen H. Renear Michael Sperberg-McQueen's approach to defining SGML/AAP tags in Script GML is the correct one of course. Within seconds of posting my note I realized what an embarassing kludge I was about to exhibit to the world and fired off notes to McCarty (to excise the offending bits) and Benson (to keep him on the right path). But, alas, CORNELLC went down and my northward mail queued up &c. &c. Anyway, both Script and GML allow the delimiters -- both beginning and ending -- to be reassigned; and tailoring the GML delimiters, as Michael noted, makes the most sense. *If* you feel you really must change delimiters at all. As Sperberg-McQueen hints delimiters are trivial; stick with the sensible ":" and "." of GML and just define AAP GML tags. If your publisher says they *have* to be "<>"s you can change them at the end. There are some general morals here though. One of them is that SGML/AAP style text processing is indeed possible today, apart from any special SGML software. And it can be supported by powerful formatters and programmable editors. Another is that using SGML/AAP style tags is easy, in fact, nothing could be easier. Of course we do want software that will support our tag based text processing more actively than general editors and formatters do. And that's coming. Consider, again, Softquad's Author/Editor -- it creates an SGML/AAP file, but as you simply choose document components from a context sensitive menu (it shows you only the relevant components for that point in the document) not only do you not bother with delimiters, you don't even bother with tags per se -- that's all handled by the editor. This is the sort of stuff we can hope to see more of. ========================================================================= Date: 9 February 1988, 00:20:16 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Zacour's sense of proportion (33 lines) Norman Zacour has responded with a certain lack of enthusiasm to the various comments about CD-ROMs and what they offer. I also spend a great deal of time thinking, swearing, etc., and less time looking things up, but I think my percentages are not quite his. Having spent the last 3 years or so tinkering with database software and learning to depend on it for gathering, arranging, and retrieving the textual evidence I use, I am less resistant to the vision (from "an high mountain" to be sure, but I smell no sulphur) of wonderfully vast amounts of source material. At the fingertips, in one's own study, this material will tend to be used much more than if it's only in the Library. Perhaps that's good, perhaps not; anyway, for the kind of work I do, the easier the sources are to get to, the better. Zacour has a more basic point with which I have no trouble whatsoever. Forgive me, but I sometimes, in some contexts, wonder what happened to the "humanities" in "humanities computing." I am reminded of our ancient colleague Archimedes, who is supposed to have said that if he were given a place to stand and a lever long enough, he would be able to move the world. I suppose that he would have, too. Where would we be now? Spinning beyond the orbit of Pluto? Willard McCarty mccarty@utorepas.bitnet ========================================================================= Date: 9 February 1988, 09:42:19 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion Comments: From: goer@sophist.uchicago.edu(Richard Goerwitz) From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: CD-ROMS and what not (64 lines) In response to Robin Cover's posting, asking whether we would be tempted to buy a CD-ROM given advanced hypertext systems, let me point out that these systems are still vaporware! And when they do come out, most will not even be able to act like a simple concordance, allowing you to look up things by root (or some generalized dictionary entry). Most will not even allow a sophisticated pattern-matching set (say regular expressions). I guess I should let everyone in on the fact that we have been corresponding privately about this, and that the system you are working on actually has these capabilities in the works. I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors. When I begin to see electronic products that can offer me keyword searches, regular expressions, and textual variants, I most certainly will purchase them! Until then, I'll have to keep the hardcopy at hand constantly anyway (hard to use the LXX, BHK, etc. with no textual apparatus), so the expense is hard for me to justify, given my graduate student's budget! Let me point out that, even if such systems do not rival their hardcopy coun- terparts in comprehensiveness, those who can afford them will probably find them useful for browsing, or for quick location of scattered references in various texts. One thing that is troublesome about hardcopy is that it takes oodles of time to flip through several texts at once, trying to locate little things here and there, all the while staying parallel in each work (this is often the case in biblical work, where one has the original, and several of the versions lying out on one's desk at once, not to mention reference works and commentaries). I believe that some will find the computer something of a time-saver in cases like this. In all, though, I must agree with Norman Zacour, who notes that most of one's time is spent flipping through mental pages - not actual books. I might also point out that at this point in my life - word processing excepted - computers have probably cost me more time than they've saved. I've spent a lot of time learning MS-DOS, UNIX, and some programming languages. I've also spent a long time developing a few programs that really aren't terribly sophis- ticated by commercial standards (the economic realities here dictate that I do other things than program all day). Worst of all, I've spent countless hours learning individual programs, from the tiniest utility to the biggest applica- tions programs - all of which are constantly growing, mutating, maturing, and dying. It is an incredible time investment, and so far it has cost me far more than it's paid off. For me to take the plunge for new software right now, it's going to have to be pretty slick, pretty easy to use, pretty reliable, and su- premely useful, not to mention stable in its interface, and permanent in its availability! The kinds of projects you are working on have as good a chance of fitting this bill as any other I've heard of. Again, good luck. -Richard L. Goerwitz goer@sophist.uchicago.edu !ihnp4!gargoyle!sophist!goer ========================================================================= Date: 9 February 1988, 11:17:20 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: CD-ROM use (32 lines) ---------------------------- From Keith W. Whitelam () We are in the process of ordering a CD-ROM reader so that the technology can be assessed. The hope is to equip a micro lab with readers for use by Arts departments in text analysis. Departmental funds are scarce, particularly in the Arts, so Computing Science are going to provide the hardware and help in the assessment. Incidentally does anyone know if it is possible to network a CD-ROM reader so that the texts can be accessed by more than one micro or are we faced with the problem of providing readers for all the machines? The hypertext CD-ROM for biblical studies, mentioned by Robin Cover, is precisely the kind of development that we are looking for. As a biblical specialist, such a development offers immense possibilities for research. The great advantage of CD-ROMS is surely not simply to look up a few passages but to provide a large text database for searches and so analysis of a particular text or texts. The caveat introduced by Sterling Bjorndahl concerning a breakthrough in read/write optical disks is a major problem. With limited resources, do we await the breakthrough, in technology and more importantly pricing, or do we provide a research and teaching facility based on CD-ROMS? As a footnote, do IBYCUS market their micro in Britain? ========================================================================= Date: 9 February 1988, 11:45:12 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Are CDROMs all that marvellous? (43 lines) ---------------------------- From Susan Hockey Before we get too excited about the prospect of CDROMs all over the place, shouldn't we be asking what we can do with them, or (to put it the right way round) can they answer the questions which we want to ask? There are two approaches to CDROMs for text: (1) The TLG and the planned PHI CDROMs which are intended for use with Ibycus. These contain only sequential text files - the apparent speed of searching on Ibycus is because of a hardware chip between the disk and the CPU which acts as a filter and only passes to the CPU hit records. Any other software which reads this disk on a PC is bound to be much slower, probably too slow for anybody to want to use interactively on anything but a short text. (2) Everybody else's which use indexes for searching, and are supplied to the user with packaged software for their use. For these it is in the supplier's interest not to let the user reproduce the basic text. To speed up access times these systems often hold the indexes on more conventional disk. Most CDROMs which are available now in this category contain bibliographic data, but there are plans for others holding text. Therefore it seems to me that (1) can only answer questions which are defined as a sequential search (I admit it does this very well) and (2) can only answer questions which somebody else (i.e. the compiler of the indexes) has decided need to be answered. Neither (1) nor (2) address the problem of retrieving too much information (for human digestion) other than at the level of collocations, nor do they provide the user with much opportunity to do any further analysis with the text using other software. Apart from one or two attempts to index the TLG material I don't know of any CDROMs for textual scholarly use apart from the ones intended for Ibycus. (I don't count the OED CDROM here.) I would like to know what use HUMANISTS want to make of CDROMs. I don't want to hear how marvellous it is have all this text available. I want to hear what specific questions can be answered now and what scholarly activities can be aided by CDROMs. I also want to hear what questions people would like to ask which can't be answered now and whether they think existing CDROM systems could answer them. Susan Hockey SUSAN@VAX.OX.AC.UK ========================================================================= Date: 9 February 1988, 16:09:45 EST Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Subject: Teleconferencing at Rochester Institute of Technology (204 ll.) ---------------------------- From Doug Hawthorne REPLY TO 02/09/88 08:31 FROM UNKNOWN: In a remarkable coincidence I received the following, fairly lengthy description of the use of teleconferencing in a history course at Rochester Institute of Technology just before reading Dan Brink's query. Other readers of HUMANIST may find in the RIT experience some ideas applicable to their own teaching. Doug Hawthorne From the Handicap Digest # 235: Written by: patth@dasys1 (Patt Haring) Modern American History on VAX Notes Computer Conferencing in RIT Classes by Professor Norman Coombs Professor of history Rochester Institute of Technology 1 Lomb Memorial Drive Rochester N. Y. 14607 Bitnet address: bitnet%"nrcgsh@ritvaxd" At Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), a truly modern version of Modern American history is being taught with VAX Notes, Digital's new electronic conferencing package. This class is part of an on-going experiment using a computer conference to replace the standard classroom lecture/discussion format. Results have been extremely positive to date. Using VAX Notes, professors and students have the opportunity to transcend the boundaries of time and space. Since no one has to be at the same place at the same time to participate in the conference, VAX Notes provides a maximum of schedule flexibility for everyone concerned. This approach is particularly useful for off-campus students trying to balance busy schedules that include work, family and school. VAX Notes is also a convenient and easy conference program to use even for professors and students who have very limited computer experience. VAX Notes is a software package that is compatible with the VMS software environment and works with standard editors, such as EDT, EVE and WPS. It can be called from the ALL-IN-1 Office and Information System menu and is available on all Digital VAX systems, from MicroVAX to high-end VAX computers. A VAX Notes conference is overseen by a moderator, (in this case, the class professor), who posts of a variety of topics within a particular conference. At RIT the data is entered on the professor's (Apple ii plus and modem). Students can enter their responses on a variety of terminals, personal workstations and pc's located in labs in class buildings, dorms or, in the case of a pc, at home) and the response to each topic is automatically attached to that subject. This allows several discussions to be held simultaneously within a conference. Everyone is assigned a title and a number, allowing the user to follow each in a logical and normal fashion. VAX Notes keeps a notebook in the user's main directory that tracks which topics and responses a user has read. Each time the user participates in the conference, VAX Notes automatically begins at the first item which had been added since the user last took part. This allows the participant to keep up with the discussion without having to remember which notes had already been viewed and without having to find find his or her place. The Modern American History course was structured so students gained information from textbook readings and from watching video tapes. These were available in the library where students could use them at their own convenience. The VAX Notes conference took the place of a classroom discussion on these materials. Each week I posted a set of three to five topics on the current material, consisting of several questions. Students logged on to VAX Notes and attached their responses electronically to the relevant topic by inputting them on terminals located either on campus or from home I checked the postings for new entries several times each day and added comments of MY own when appropriate. There were two sections of Modern American History given in the Summer and Fall semesters. The material in each was identical and both sections took the same objective exams. The traditional class met twice weekly for discussions with the professor and served as a control group for the experiment. Both in the Summer and Fall, the students in the computer confeencing section scored a higher mean grade than those in the traditional class. In the Fall, the control group scored a mean grade of 78.7 while the computer students averaged 82.0. This probably does not mean that computer conferences are better than class discussion. Rather, the use of the computer frightened away the below average student. Also the computer section did have a grade point average slightly a