15.041 obstacles to humanities computing

From: by way of Willard McCarty (willard@lists.village.Virginia.EDU)
Date: Wed May 23 2001 - 03:12:35 EDT

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                    Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 15, No. 41.
           Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   <http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
                  <http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>

       [1] From: John Lavagnino <John.Lavagnino@kcl.ac.uk> (9)
             Subject: Re: 15.031 obstacles to humanities computing: SGML
                     authoring

       [2] From: "David L. Gants" <dgants@english.uga.edu> (63)
             Subject: Re: 15.031 obstacles to humanities computing: SGML
                     authoring

       [3] From: Anne Mahoney <amahoney@perseus.tufts.edu> (16)
             Subject: Re: 15.035 obstacles to humanities computing

    --[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
             Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 07:57:52 +0100
             From: John Lavagnino <John.Lavagnino@kcl.ac.uk>
             Subject: Re: 15.031 obstacles to humanities computing: SGML authoring

    Charles Faulhaber comments:

    > You should not have had to spend uncounted hours to get to this
    > level; and I think that it is a real indictment of humanities
    > computing as a discipline that you have had to do so.

    If you want to get trained in something and then never learn anything
    else, scholarship is the wrong line of work for you. I recommend
    something like plumbing.

    John Lavagnino
    Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London

    --[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
             Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 08:05:58 +0100
             From: "David L. Gants" <dgants@english.uga.edu>
             Subject: Re: 15.031 obstacles to humanities computing: SGML authoring

    >> From: "Kirk Lowery" <kelowery@cs.com>

    On 21 May 2001, at 6:36, by way of Charles Faulhaber wrote:

    > I've worked with EMACS on Windows, and I'm afraid that I didn't like it at
    > all. I think that once you get the hang of it, it does everything that you
    > say it will do; but it is absolutely counter-intuitive for anyone who has
    > never used UNIX.

    I certainly don't want to start any religious war over the One True
    Editor(TM). But for those who *must* do markup and cannot afford the very
    expensive commercial solutions, Emacs+Psgml+XAE is a practical alternative.

    Why do I say "practical?" Because all the essential functions of markup
    can be accessed via a menu. By menu one can:

          o create and save a file
          o create the XML/SGML declarations for DTDs.
          o parse the DTD
          o insert tags without having to remember what they are
            (Emacs "knows" all about each element and entity, the element's
            content model)
            o invalid markup is not allowed by Emacs based upon the DTD
            (Really helpful if one is just getting to know a complex DTD)
          o mark up pre-existing text by selecting a span of text
            (Emacs will insert the start and end tags appropriately
          o apply the associated XSL stylesheet which passes converted HTML to
            a browser for viewing

    No command lines. No arcane key-bindings to learn. The syntax
    highlighting alone is worth the cost of learning it. To see some excellent
    examples of colorized SGML/XML/XSL markup in Emacs, see
    <http://dulug.duke.edu/~mark/screenshots/index.html>

    I admit the installation takes some skill. However, I can take someone who
    understands about markup, and have them successfully doing markup in Emacs
    in a half-hour or less. This assumes that they've had previous experience
    with word processors of some kind. And because the system is in their
    familiar Windoze environment, they won't have to get used to Unix's
    stability and they'll have their familiar "Blue Screen of Death"! :-)

    > I think that what you describe is precisely the situation that we need
    > to get away from. It should _not_ be necessary for scholars to become
    > computer experts in order to do the work for which we have been trained.

    Computational skills are on a par, in my opinion, with communication
    skills: we expect scholars to be able to effectively articulate their
    ideas orally and in writing. They should be able to handle a computer with
    equal facility. Otherwise, they don't know how to utilize the full power
    of information technology, and will be left in the dust by those who do.

    > You should not have had to spend uncounted hours to get to this level;
    > and I think that it is a real indictment of humanities computing as a
    > discipline that you have had to do so.

    I thank you for your sympathetic concern. I don't resent the time. It's
    what pioneers and "early adopters" must do. As a discipline, the
    humanities have a long way to go to catch up with the natural sciences in
    adapting to the Information Age.

    <rant>
    "Humanities computing" cannot be a separate discipline, the business of
    only the "propeller-heads" among us. Until it becomes the concern of every
    professor in the humanities, your "indictment" will stand.

    Do you know what I find encouraging? The Information Age has freed us. The
    ivory tower is no longer a symbol of isolation: a satellite dish is
    sitting on top of it. We don't have to wait for everyone to "get it." We
    can just go out and *do*.
    </rant>

    Best wishes,

    Kirk
    ________________________________________________________________________
    Kirk E. Lowery, Ph.D. <Kirk@leningradensis.org>
    Associate Director, Westminster Hebrew Institute
    General Editor, Project "eL", The XML Leningrad Codex
    Chair, Computer Assisted Research Group, Society of Biblical Literature

    --[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
             Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 08:06:54 +0100
             From: Anne Mahoney <amahoney@perseus.tufts.edu>
             Subject: Re: 15.035 obstacles to humanities computing

    Willard asks about "L. Dindorf" in Dodds's Bacchae commentary, on ll.
    661-662. I presume the reference is to Dindorf's edition of the plays
    of Euripides, published when he (Dindorf, not Euripides!) was only 20.
    You would have expected a reference to "Dindorf" to mean William, who
    wrote a lot on tragedy (and Greek poetry generally). Were they
    brothers?

    How does one find this out? I went to the OPAC of my favorite big
    library. I don't expect the average graduate student in classics knows
    anything about either Dindorf, but I would like to be able to assume
    such a student would understand the metrical point on which Dodds
    disagrees with his predecessor. Ideally, there would be a search tool
    that would allow the curious reader to find all the instances of
    "tribrachs composed of a single word coinciding with the foot" (to quote
    Dodds's slightly antiquated language); that's a tool that would greatly
    facilitate work that's very tedious with print editions.

    --Anne Mahoney
    Stoa Consortium



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