7.0588 Network Resources: Latin text and Hypertext (1/37)

Elaine Brennan (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Wed, 30 Mar 1994 22:29:31 EST

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 7, No. 0588. Wednesday, 30 Mar 1994.

Date: Thu, 24 Mar 1994 11:38:36 -0500 (EST)
From: "James O'Donnell" <jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu>
Subject: Latin text + hypertext on the net

I'm happy to announce a new net resource, quite experimental, but betokening
an interesting future. The traditional student commentary, of the sort we
have been publishing in Bryn Mawr Commentaries since Rick Hamilton had the
stroke of genius for that series fifteen years ago, is a codex book crying out
to be hypertext. I can now offer a single, short but amusing example of a
Bryn Mawr Commentary as an Internet-accessible hypertext. You can call up the
Latin text on screen, read it: if a word is highlighted, you click on it and
it takes you immediately to the commentary; another click brings you back to
the text.

The text in question is the witty "Council of Remiremont", the tale of twelfth
century nuns debating solemnly whether knights or scholars make better
lovers. (The answer should have been obvious, readers of this list will
say.) The print version was prepared with great care and learning by Paul
Pascal, professor emeritus of Classics at the University of Washington, and
all we have now done is massage his work into hypertext form. The poem is
about 250 lines long and makes "a good read". It's meant for the reader whose
Latin is still a little rusty.

To access this text, you must have some form of World-Wide Web browser. The
fancy ones, Mosaic and the like, are quite pretty, but you can do this with a
pure vt100 terminal as well, using the www application or, my preference,
lynx. If you don't know how to get at the Web from your network connection,
ask locally among the wizards: they should know. What you need to know to
get at this text is this mystic sequence of runes:

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/remiremont.html

Comments, suggestions, and the like are most welcome. There are occasionally
these days bugs in the "links" between files, so be prepared for the
occasional anomaly; if it recurs and is annoying, let me know.

Jim O'Donnell
Classics, U. of Penn
jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu