Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 15, No. 605.
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: Wendell Piez <wapiez@mulberrytech.com> (81)
Subject: Re: 15.602 seeking advice for an online edn
[2] From: John Unsworth <jmu2m@virginia.edu> (13)
Subject: Re: 15.602 seeking advice for an online edn
[3] From: Lou Burnard <lou@ermine.ox.ac.uk> (73)
Subject: Re: 15.602 seeking advice for an online edn
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 07:18:54 +0100
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@mulberrytech.com>
Subject: Re: 15.602 seeking advice for an online edn
Dear Robert,
I can't speak to every aspect of what you are trying to do, but...
At 01:51 AM 4/25/2002, you wrote:
>1) after initial data entry (using
>a standard word processor) and proofreading, what's the best software for
>SGML/XML tagging (using a Mac platform)? Adobe Framemaker + SGML looks
>promising; others recommend Dreamweaver. Advice eagerly solicited.
This is somewhat tough. The SGML market has been fairly moribund since XML
came on the scene (even though SGML is still used in plenty of places, such
as publishing houses, where the up-front investment has already been made,
since it does work very well once it's set up), and for various reasons,
cultural and otherwise, XML support has been much slower to emerge on the
Mac than on the PC. But:
FrameMaker + SGML is good at what it does, but may not be altogether well
suited for your tasks. It's not really an SGML editor but a "structured
editor" that can import and export SGML; as such, it's a beast to set up,
and in itself does not support much functionality outside its forte, DTP.
I would avoid Dreamweaver, as something whose XML support is an
afterthought. It is really a web site development platform, not at all the
same thing as an XML editor. (I'd like to be proven wrong on this.)
Other alternatives: I have colleagues who use SoftQuad XMetaL running on
Virtual PC. This is an unfortunate reality for Macs for the time being, but
if you can run VirtualPC, XMetaL is quite well suited to the task of
scholarly encoding. (It's actually a descendant of SGML editing software
originally developed for the Mac.) I'm told this is actually quite workable
if your system is strong enough to support the extra overhead (*sigh*) of
running a poorly-engineered OS on top of a well-engineered one.
At the low end, there is e-macs (and the TEI community has enough e-macs
afficionados to make this quite a good alternative if you can hack the
learning curve), as well as BBEdit with some XML support that folks have
added to it. Also I'm told a little editor called ELF is worth looking at.
I hope other HUMANIST readers who favor Macs will weigh in on this. OS X
may provide yet more possibilities.
> 2)
>Lancashire's SGML guidelines predate the development of XML, and the
>associated modification of SGML declarations. Does anyone have experience
>modifying such older SGML guidelines in order to make sure that the work
>we produce is in TEI-conformant XML?
I'm not exactly sure here what you mean by "SGML declarations". If you are
referring to an XML-conformant TEI DTD, that work has been done. If you are
referring to that component of an SGML system known as the SGML
Declaration, which dictates delimiters and various operating constraints
for the system: SGML declarations that assure conformance to XML are not
hard to come by (I can send you one if you need) but not all SGML systems
actually support it: this will depend on your software. (More support for
this kind of thing is also available on TEI-L: see below.)
As for your larger question, keep in mind that by nature (and definition),
XML is not locked into any particular application or working environment:
you will have a whole toolkit available to you, including standalone XML
parsers and transformation technologies (especially XSLT) which you can use
for well-formedness checking and various kinds of validation.
In fact, I'd recommend getting familiar with installing and running Java
applications (you do *not* need to become a Java programmer, but only know
how to configure and run things), as there is a wealth of XML software in
Java that you can use on a Mac.
> 3) I'm planning to devise a gradual
>tagging process that will allow moving in some systematic way toward
>appropriately fine detail: can anyone advise whether Lancashire's RET
>guidelines tend toward unncessarily fine detail?
I can't answer this, being unfamiliar with the substance of the RET
guidelines, except to say that in principle, a "layered" approach to
tagging is not only feasible, it's a very good idea. Do the tagging in
multiple passes; this way you can spin off products and research results
that improve incrementally. You don't have to forego useful results until
the whole thing is done.
> 4) what issues should I be
>concerned about that I'm probably ignorant of?
Um, Unicode. :->
I'd recommend subscribing to TEI-L, the support network for TEI users, if
you haven't already.... see http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/tei-l.html.
Good luck!
Wendell
======================================================================
Wendell Piez mailto:wapiez@mulberrytech.com
Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207 Phone: 301/315-9631
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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======================================================================
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 07:19:16 +0100
From: John Unsworth <jmu2m@virginia.edu>
Subject: Re: 15.602 seeking advice for an online edn
Robert,
If you are embarking on a textual editing project in electronic form, it
would be in your interest to do the markup in XML, because of the lower
cost of editing and publishing software, as compared with SGML. Ian's RET
guidelines are SGML; he may be listening, and might promise to produce an
XML version of RET, but TEI's latest revision is XML-compliant (available
online at http://www.tei-c.org/P4X/DTD/), and if you want to begin with
something simple, I recommend TEI-Lite, described at
http://www.tei-c.org/Lite/index.html
and documented at http://www.tei-c.org/Lite/DTD/. I'm not experienced with
XML editors for the Mac platform, but a good site to learn more about them
is http://xmacl.com/.
John Unsworth
(declaration of partisanship: Chair, TEI Consortium)
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 07:20:11 +0100
From: Lou Burnard <lou@ermine.ox.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: 15.602 seeking advice for an online edn
There is a page on the TEI website which collects links to a range of
online tutorials about preparation of TEI-encoded materials. Some of them
are aimed at beginners while others are the reference manuals of specific
encoding projects. Hopefully, there is something for everyone!
http://www.tei-c.org/Tutorials/
For me to recommend particular ones on the list seems invidious,
but I'll do it anyway: probably the most directly relevant for your
purpose is the set of detailed transcription guides prepared by the
Brown Women Writers Project, while amongst several introductory guides
aimed at the complete beginner, the introduction by Martin Mueller has
much to recommend it.
For xml-editing on a MAC, the choice continues to be a bit limited, as
does my direct experience. I am told that things are better than they
were, e.g. there are several java-based editors to investigate, such
as Morphon. Also, under Mac OS/X you could presumably use the TEI's
XML-customization of emacs. For links to these and other TEI-aware
software, see
http://www.tei-c.org/Software/
Conversion from SGML to XML is not such a big deal, assuming you are
starting from real SGML and have the right tools for the job. The TEI is
currently organizing a small workgroup to produce recommendations,
samples, and possibly even software to assist in the process: watch this
space for further announcements on the topic.
Needless to say, I would much appreciate links to other relevant material
for the website which is in a constant state of ferment: mail these to
web@tei-c.org
good luck with your project!
Lou Burnard
On Thu, 25 Apr 2002, Humanist Discussion Group (by way of Willard
McCarty <w.mccarty@btinternet.com>) wrote:
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 15, No. 602.
> Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
> <http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
> <http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
>
>
>
> Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 06:43:06 +0100
> From: Robert.Knapp@directory.reed.edu (Robert Knapp)
> >
> This summer, funded by a grant promoting undergraduate research, I'm going
> to work with a student to mount a partially annotated on line edition of
> Jones's 1594 translation of Lipsius's Sixe Bookes of Politics. This will
> be no doubt be good training for both of us, and for me a useful prelude to
> getting back to a larger scholarly project; it should also have some modest
> utility for students--especially undergraduate students--of the English
> Renaissance.
>
> But as a novice at electronic editing, I could use advice from fellow
> Humanists. Of course I've looked at some of the most widely cited
> sources: the TEI Guidelines and the MLA guidelines, as well as those
> that Michael Best has developed for the Internet Shakespeare, and I've been
> consulting Charles Bailey's Scholarly Electronic Publishing
> Bibliography. At present, I intend to develop a scheme for gradual
> tagging, with full realization modeled on Ian Lancashire's RET series.
>
> But I'm concerned about several issues: 1) after initial data entry (using
> a standard word processor) and proofreading, what's the best software for
> SGML/XML tagging (using a Mac platform)? Adobe Framemaker + SGML looks
> promising; others recommend Dreamweaver. Advice eagerly solicited. 2)
> Lancashire's SGML guidelines predate the development of XML, and the
> associated modification of SGML declarations. Does anyone have experience
> modifying such older SGML guidelines in order to make sure that the work
> we produce is in TEI-conformant XML? 3) I'm planning to devise a gradual
> tagging process that will allow moving in some systematic way toward
> appropriately fine detail: can anyone advise whether Lancashire's RET
> guidelines tend toward unncessarily fine detail? 4) what issues should I be
> concerned about that I'm probably ignorant of?
>
> Any advice or hyperlinks that come to mind would be much appreciated.
>
> Robert Knapp
> Reed College
>
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