9.0009 Rs: Union List; Latin; Sesame; Scanning; E-Pubs (7/226)

Elaine Brennan (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Tue, 9 May 1995 23:09:13 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 9, No. 0009. Tuesday, 9 May 1995.


(1) Date: Sun, 7 May 1995 19:54:50 -0400 (21 lines)
From: mccarty@epas.utoronto.ca (Willard McCarty)
Subject: union list

(2) Date: Sun, 7 May 95 21:22:58 PDT (13 lines)
From: gwp@dido.caltech.edu (G. W. Pigman III)
Subject: Re: 9.0003 Rs: Latin; ClipArt; AOL; E-Dickens; Sesame (8/122)

(3) Date: Mon, 8 May 1995 23:33:35 +0300 (EET DST) (69 lines)
From: Judy Koren <judyk@techunix.technion.ac.il>
Subject: Re: E-Dickens

(4) Date: Mon, 8 May 1995 23:01:48 -0700 (PDT) (56 lines)
From: Nicholas Heer <heer@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Sesame

(5) Date: Mon, 8 May 1995 23:19:45 -0700 (PDT) (43 lines)
From: Nicholas Heer <heer@u.washington.edu>
Subject: OCR Software

(6) Date: Tue, 9 May 1995 10:02:39 -0700 (PDT) (12 lines)
From: Nicholas Heer <heer@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Calera's WordScan

(7) Date: Mon, 08 May 1995 13:17:07 MST (12 lines)
From: ocramer@cc.colorado.edu
Subject: RE: 9.0008 R: E-Pubs and Books and ... (1/27)

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 7 May 1995 19:54:50 -0400
From: mccarty@epas.utoronto.ca (Willard McCarty)
Subject: union list

The URL for the recently announced union list of selected European
newspapers and magazines, http://www.nyu.edu/pages/unionlist, appears from
here to contain a non-existant domain address, at least one without a DNS
entry. I attempted to write to the man who sent the note to Humanist, but my
mailer balked at his address as well. Perhaps our systems here are somehow
at fault. Would someone please supply an IP address for the server at NYU
until such time as the problem has been fixed?

Thanks.

WM


Willard McCarty, Centre for Computing in the Humanities (Toronto)
(416) 978-3974 voice (416) 978-6519 fax mccarty@epas.utoronto.ca
http://www.cch.epas.utoronto.ca:8080/cch/wm.html

(2) --------------------------------------------------------------23----
Date: Sun, 7 May 95 21:22:58 PDT
From: gwp@dido.caltech.edu (G. W. Pigman III)
Subject: Re: 9.0003 Rs: Latin; ClipArt; AOL; E-Dickens; Sesame (8/122)

Jim Marchand is right about the sense of "materiam superabat opus"
(the workmanship surpassed the materials). The phrase comes from
Ovid, <i>Metamorphoses</i>, ii. 5, the description of the palace of
the sun, which is made of gold, silver, ivory, and pyropus (a mixture
of bronze and gold). On the doors Vulcan carved a splendid example of
his workmanship, a scene of sea, land, and sky.

G. W. Pigman III
gwp@dido.caltech.edu
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------81----
Date: Mon, 8 May 1995 23:33:35 +0300 (EET DST)
From: Judy Koren <judyk@techunix.technion.ac.il>
Subject: Re: E-Dickens

> Try the following:
>
> Anonymous ftps - address: nic.funet.fi -- which has several Dickens texts
> ftp.uu.net -- author information and list of
> texts available at the site
> ftp.spies.com or gopher: wiretap.spies.com --
> for pointers on where to obtain etexts
>
> You can find things like this, thanks to the Gutenberg
> Project.

Yes, everyone mentions the Gutenberg Project, which is undoubtedly the
best known etext project, because it does the most publicizing of its good
works. So I thought I'd mention a few places that hide their light under
a bush, as they say (or did when I was growing up in England), but actually
have more material than the GP:

1) OBI, the Online Book Initiative. ftp to ftp.std.com, directory: obi
Also via gopher to world.std.com, choose the OBI from menus.
A nice point about this, apart from having lots of stuff, is that they
call their directories by the name of the author (eg Charles.Dickens)
rather than the year the book happened to be put on the net as the GP
does (etext/93, etext/94 etc. -- *terribly* helpful... :-) )

2) OTA, the Oxford Text Archives. C'mon, Humanists, we all forgot it exists?
They used to charge for service/postage in the days when they shipped you
magnetic tapes, but since they made their stuff available for ftp they
charge only for things that are still in copyright (which I assume
does not include our friend Dickens). Last time I looked up the
statistics they had 1,300 titles in 28 languages, I'm sure it's more now.
Ftp to ota.ox.ac.uk, directory: ota, there's a list of what's on it in
the file textarchive.list. The files themselves are in subdirs. of ota;
there's also an "info" file in the ota directory which presumably tells
you how to tame this beastie.

3) CETH, Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities: joint project of
Rutgers and Princeton. When I heard about it, it had just a small
collection and its aim was both to provide etexts and to provide software
for text analysis. Sorry, don't have an address but I'm sure Elaine
can help me out here, 'cos one of the things it did have was the texts
of the Brown Univ. Women Writers' Project. I doubt it's got Dickens but
it's getting to be late at night and my editorial judgement is working
slower than my fingers; I figured Humanists in general might like to
know about it.

Incidentally, while we're on the subject, there's a project to catalog
e-text projects: CPET, Catalog of Projects in Electronic Text, run by
Georgetown Univ.'s Center for Text and Technology (CTT -- I just discovered
that PCMCIA "really" stands for People Can't reMember Computer Industry
Acronyms, and I'm starting to get their point.) Includes info. on several
hundred projects, arranged by subject, all in the humanities.
Ftp to guvax.georgetown.edu, directory: cpet_projects_in_electronic_text
Yes, this is a vax and those are underline characters. You can also try
gophering to Georgetown U.'s gopher, it's supposed to be available from
there too.

Hope this helps. Me, I'd try OBI first.

+ ----------------------------------------------------------- +
| Judy Koren, |
| Consultant -- Internet, database and information services |
| P.O.Box 405, Denya, Haifa, Israel 34981. |
| Tel. 972-4-341704 email: judyk@tx.technion.ac.il |
+ ----------------------------------------------------------- +

(4) --------------------------------------------------------------70----
Date: Mon, 8 May 1995 23:01:48 -0700 (PDT)
From: Nicholas Heer <heer@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Sesame


The phrase "Open, O Sesame" occurs, as is well known, in the story
of `Ali Baba and the forty thieves in the Thousand and One Nights. The
Arabic is "iftah ya simsim," simsim being the Arabic word for sesame.

Nicholas Heer


On Sun, 7 May 1995, Elaine Brennan wrote:

> (7) --------------------------------------------------------------27----
> Date: Wed, 3 May 95 18:55:16 CST
> From: "Jim Marchand" <marchand@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
> Subject: Sesame
>
> This is one scholars have argued about for years. Plants which opened doors
> and locks were well-known in folklore, e.g. springwort. It may be that
> sesame is just a magic word, it may be connected with sesame, which does
> have magical properties, or it may it is just a reference to springwort. If
> you want to go further, Funk and Wagnalls' Standard Dictionary of Folklore,
> Mythology and Legend (s.v. "open sesame") is a good place to start; or
> Grimm's Germanische Mythologie.
> Jim Marchand.
> (8) --------------------------------------------------------------62----
> Date: Thu, 4 May 1995 17:43:40 +0001
> From: Donald Spaeth <dspaeth@dish.gla.ac.uk>
> Subject: Re: 8.0485 Qs: Sesame
>
> Mark Calkins asked:
>
> > Does the "sesame" in "open sesame" refer simply to the sesame seed? And
> > ... is there any symbolism or mythology associated with the
> > sesame seed?
>
> Philistine that I am, I've always assumed that "open
> sesame" should be read as "open says (a) me". This would
> imply that the phrase was different in other languages.
> But I hope there's a more interesting explanation!
>
> Donald Spaeth
>
> Dr Donald A Spaeth
> Lecturer in Historical Computing
> School of History and Archaeology
> University of Glasgow
> 1 University Gardens
> Glasgow G12 8QQ
> United Kingdom
>
> Tel: 0141 330-4942 Fax: 0141 330-5518
> E-mail: dspaeth@dish.gla.ac.uk
>
(5) --------------------------------------------------------------58----
Date: Mon, 8 May 1995 23:19:45 -0700 (PDT)
From: Nicholas Heer <heer@u.washington.edu>
Subject: OCR Software


I recently bought a Hewlett-Packard black and white flatbed
scanner. It came with Calera's WordScan for MS Windows. I'm amazed at
how well it works in comparison with another OCR program that came with a
hand-held scanner that I had tried, quite unsuccessfully, to use
previously. I've always heard that OmniPage Pro was the best OCR software
available, although much too expensive for my budget. WordScan, however,
works very well for me, at least with English texts. I have yet to try it
with any other languages.

Nicholas Heer


On Sun, 7 May 1995, Elaine Brennan wrote:

> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 9, No. 0005. Sunday, 7 May 1995.
>
>
> (1) Date: Wed, 3 May 1995 20:36:25 -0400 (20 lines)
> (1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: Wed, 3 May 1995 20:36:25 -0400
> From: mccarty@epas.utoronto.ca (Willard McCarty)
> Subject: OCR software?
>
> I need some quick recommendations for commercially available OCR software
> than runs under PC/Windows (preferable for me) or Macintosh OS -- other than
> OmniPage Pro, which I have and am familiar with. That one eliminated, what
> is best, given all the usual demands of scholarly work? Please mail me a
> quick note as well as respond to Humanist.
>
> Thanks.
>
> WM
>
>
>
> Willard McCarty, Centre for Computing in the Humanities (Toronto)
> (416) 978-3974 voice (416) 978-6519 fax mccarty@epas.utoronto.ca
> http://www.cch.epas.utoronto.ca:8080/cch/wm.html
(6) --------------------------------------------------------------33----
Date: Tue, 9 May 1995 10:02:39 -0700 (PDT)
From: Nicholas Heer <heer@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Calera's WordScan

Willard,

I've just noticed that there is a review of Calera's WordScan in
today's (9 May) New York Times. It's on page B11 in the national edition.
The review also mentions Charactereyes for Windows from Ligature Software
as well as the professional version, Charactereyes Pro.

Nicholas
(7) --------------------------------------------------------------20----
Date: Mon, 08 May 1995 13:17:07 MST
From: ocramer@cc.colorado.edu
Subject: RE: 9.0008 R: E-Pubs and Books and ... (1/27)

So far, the enthusiasm for e-texts where they can replace printed
has, in my experience, been in older rather than younger people:
I sense in the young now less total love of reading and more
resistance to high-tech reading than I detect in my contemporaries.
Owen Cramer
Classics, Colorado College

OCRAMER@cc.colorado.edu