21.127 ideal readers for a database

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 21, No. 127.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
  www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/cch/research/publications/humanist.html
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         Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 07:30:55 +0100
         From: Patrick Durusau <patrick_at_durusau.net>
         Subject: Re: 21.125 ideal readers for a database

Willard,

Desmond Schmidt notes:

>However, you make another valid point, when you complain that it is
>difficult "to consult different readings". When we directly transfer
>the printed structures of "edition" and "apparatus criticus" into the
>digital medium we are like the early printers who made books in the
>image of manuscripts. It took them 100 years to realise their mistake.
>We still think of the text as one version, whereas in fact it is many.
>This fact has to be built into the archive itself and made the
>fundamental structure of the text. Otherwise we will forever be
>scratching around trying to compare a text here in one format with a
>text there in another, or building closed systems that do what we want
>but don't interact with others. Markup can't record variation very well
>but markup is what we are seemingly stuck with, and that is why I think
>it is difficult to build the flexibility you crave.
Which is true but the markup community (at least parts of it) have
been working on solving that problem.

In connection with the Extreme Markup conference in Montreal you will
find: International Workshop on Markup of Overlapping Structures,
see: http://www.mulberrytech.com/Extreme/overlap/index.html

The workshop is on 5 August 2007 and the main conference is 6 - 11 August.

I can't promise that you are going to find a solution you can just
drop into a project to solve the problem but you will find the very
latest thinking on how to work towards the sort of flexibility that
you are seeking.

If you are interested in cutting edge markup technology the Extreme
conference is "the" conference to attend.

Hope everyone is having a great day!

Patrick

-- 
Patrick Durusau
patrick_at_durusau.net
Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Acting Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)
Co-Editor, OpenDocument Format (OASIS, ISO/IEC 26300)