template for biographies (142)
Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@VM.EPAS.UTORONTO.CA)
Sat, 11 Feb 89 16:35:32 EST
Humanist Mailing List, Vol. 2, No. 594. Saturday, 11 Feb 1989.
Date: 10 February 1989
From: Willard McCarty <MCCARTY@UTOREPAS>
Subject: biographical template
Some of you will know that Steve DeRose and others have been busy
getting the biographies of Humanists into shape. Their aim, if I may
presume to state it, is to make the information in the biographies more
easily accessible. I hasten to point out that although this involves a
more demanding format than before, no one is suggesting that the
contents of the biography itself be any less expressive or humane.
I am attaching below Steve's standard template. The idea is that
henceforth all new members would be asked to fill in the template and
that any updates submitted by members would have to use it as well.
(Existing biographies have been edited accordingly and will shortly be
made available in three forms: as an SGML file, as a plain file without
tags, and as a HyperCard stack.)
The fictitious biography to which Steve refers has yet to be written. Is
no one challenged enough to write a suitable biography for Morris Zapp
or for some other such character?
Your comments, please.
Willard McCarty
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Biographical Template for Humanist
Last updated February 2, 1989.
The following template provides markup tags to delineate the
various pieces of information which should be included in your
Humanist biography. The biographies are available to the members
of the forum, and are a good way to find others with common
interests, so please take care to include what you most want others
to know. The biography should be written in the first person.
Note that the markup tags are examples of the syntax of SGML, an
international standard system for descriptively tagging the elements
of documents. This method makes the information usable not only for
word-processing, but also as a database and for other uses. The
biographies are available in SGML, as formatted ASCII files, and
in a HyperCard(tm) stack.
General instructions: Please keep lines to at most 70 characters,
and break lines only at word boundaries. You may include the "<p>"
tag to mark the start of a new paragraph, and the "<line>" tag to
start a new line (e.g. in addresses, lists, etc.). For this simple
application, every tag should begin a new line. As is usual in
online forums, please express emphasis by surrounding emphatic
words by asterisks: "*very*".
There follows an empty template, which you may simply fill in
and mail to the moderator, Willard Mccarty, MCCARTY at UTOREPAS
on Bitnet. A fictitious biography is also included below as a
guide, as are some notes on how best to express particular data.
----------- Template -- see below for further information ------------
------------ Fill in and mail to MCCARTY@UTOREPAS.Bitnet -------------
<sketch>
<name>
<inst>
<dept>
<position>
<addr>
<line>
<line>
<pc>
<ctry>
<phone>
<email>
<hardware>
<software>
<interests>
<bio>
---------------------- End of biography template ---------------------
*|||||||<sketch>
-- Must appear at beginning of each biographical sketch.
*|||||||<name>
-- Last name first, as in "Washington, George."
*|||||||<inst>
-- Institutional affiliation, not including department or job title.
Please abbreviate "University" to "Univ.", and include the period.
When both are appropriate, use "Univ. of X", not "X University".
For state universities, append the city after a comma if appropriate.
Note the separate entry and tag for department and position within an
institution -- these data should not be duplicated here.
*|||||||<dept>
-- Department within the institution. Abbreviate to "Dept. of"; e.g.,
use "Dept. of English" rather than "English Department"; consistency
makes sorting and searching easier. Not everyone has a "Department";
thus the the name of this field only generally describes its use.
*|||||||<position>
-- Job title or similar specification of work.
*|||||||<addr>
-- Paper-mail address, not including country or postal code.
Line breaks within the address should be coded with the "<line>" tag.
*|||||||<pc>
-- Postal code
*|||||||<ctry>
-- Country. No periods in abbreviations. A few of the more common
specifications are (for consistency) spelled: USA, UK, GB, Canada.
*|||||||<phone>
-- Full telephone number(s). An office phone may be prefixed by "(o)",
and home by "(h)".
*|||||||<email>
-- Electronic mail address.
*|||||||<hardware>
-- Primary computer hardware. To avoid spelling differences, here are
some standard names: PC, AT, PS/2, Vax, Mac, IBM mainframe, Sun,
Apollo. When it is more relevant than the particular hardware, you
may specify an operating system (e.g. Unix, VMS, etc.) instead.
*|||||||<software>
-- Significant or unusual software used (few members include this).
*|||||||<interests>
-- A terse list of one's primary (relevant) interests. These will
probably be discussed further in the biography proper, so this element
should contain only a brief list of keywords which others (or perhaps
programs) can scan quickly to get a rough idea of one's area(s).
*|||||||<bio>
-- Marks the start of the biography text per se. The biography text
should describe your background, current research activities and
interests, and perhaps what you hope to contribute to the forum,
as well as any other information you deem interesting. Please write
in the first person.
The <p> (paragraph) and <line> (new line) tags may appear within the
scope of other tags.
-------------------------- Sample biography --------------------------
-- to be added --