Topic: Markup Languages
Leaders: Matthew Gibson and Chris Ruotolo
Questions:
1) TEI has succeeded because it's good enough. Libraries have much
to do with this as they needed pragmatic solutions. But is TEI/SGML
the best option for humanists?
2) How will the nature of editing in the various disciplines affect
the teaching of markup? Historians see editing as a very different
activity than do literary scholars.
3) Is markup interpretation? What type of interpretation?
4) Does SGML necessarily impose a hierarchy? Does seeing through the
SGML lens necessarily interpret a text?
5) Markup vs. Database. When do you use what?
6) Markup and non-linguistic texts/media. Images? Audio? Music?
----GR: Is postscript a markup language?
CR: Postcript is linear--a series of instructions. SGML is hierarchical.
GR: If you wanted to analyze the spatial properties of texts, the layout, then postscript might be what you want. Postscript lets you define placement--2 inches down and 2 inches to the left. You could analyze postscript documents for layout.
JD: There are printers that are interested in intersection of "content" and "layout."
CR: This also points to xsl:fo. Page as its unit of output.
RD: Is a bitmap image an "encoding" of a text? Is markup the only way of encoding a text? So maybe we need to broaden the discussion, the issue is representation.
SR: SMILE.
SR: Sould the center of the markup unit be TEI? Should that be our case study?
JM: No, TEI is a historical phenomenon. It shouldn't be the center. Problems of markup. Problems of text.
RD: Treat markup as just another type of representation. Don't privilege it in any way.
BN: But we want these people to be practitioners. We need to teach them something that they can use.
JM: No, that shouldn't be our primary goal.
SR: Any markup language necessarily acts as a filter. Any markup language won't represent all aspects of the material page.
CR: Why do you markup? Automate processing. Facilitate analysis.
AL: Separate this into two "projects." Class readings, lectures, discussions about representation and encoding in general. Case studies or projects to give everyone hands-on experience. Those interested in text would markup something in TEI and then reflect on its limitations. Those interested in music could take Perry's markup language and markup a score and then reflect on it. Then all could bring their projects to present to class.
GR: Don't want to freeze the curriculum.
KR is about ontology. Ontology is about abstraction. TEI is an abstraction is an ontology. If we're having problems with markup, with TEI and XML, then maybe we're really having doubts as to the relevance, accuracy, etc. of KR as a logical operation.
What about an ethical system of representation?
JM: All text is marked text. Books are knowledge representation.
JD: Okay, yes. But so is the alphabet. But we don't go around questioning that. I like the idea of ethical representation, even if it only functions as a thought experiment.
SR: TEI is a failure as as answer to the question "What is text?" But it's an amazing success as a tool for doing lots of procedures with texts.
TEI is analagous to a style manual in a printing house. Do we say one is logical and one is procedural? How can we justify this distinction?
RD: Or should we teach XML and, maybe, TEI as one implementation of XML?
JM: How do we teach this?
Pitti approach: start with texts--recipes--and work up.
Or do we give them a text and give them TEI?
RD: What do we do with students who aren't focused on text? Artists or museum curators (to be)? These people might go off to gather and arrange works for display, for a show, for an exhibition. And they would need to represent these on the Web.
How do you create an interesting exhibition on the Web?
How do you distinguish between an edition, an archive, an exhibition?
In these different media, the problem of representation occurs at different levels.
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