xml-dev - Re: Gutenberg Project <longish>

["Frank Boumphrey" <bckman@ix.netcom.com>]

> I'd be interested in a detailed technical rebuttal of why the TEI does not
> already provide exactly you need.

We tried using it. Unfortunatly our volunteers found it extreamly difficult
to use. When I tested it on a group of 50(non-honors) students, I got
exactly two texts marked up over a three month period (and they were being
offered extra credit!).

At this rate it would take approximately. 1000 years to mark up the
Gutenberg library!

OTH with more intuitive DTD's 30 volunteers have marked up 120 texts in
under a month, and only two of these volunteers had formal training in XML.

Not a technical argument I know, but an argument from necessity.

Here are two of our submitted requirements

The DTD's shall be simple to use.
================================
  Rational:
  Gutenberg DTD's will be used by used by Volunteers to
  mark up Etexts and other existing electronic documents.
  For the most part these volunteers will have had no
  formal training in XML, SGML, or other document authoring
  processes. It is therfore necessary that DTD's should
  be useable with only minimal formal training.

Markup shall be intuitive.
==========================
  Rational:
  This goes hand in glove with requirement 1. The element
  names should reflect real world structures and content.
  Thus <para> is preferable to <p> and <date> is preferable
  to <dt>.


Frank

----- Original Message -----
From: Sebastian Rahtz <sebastian.rahtz@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk>
To: <bckman@ix.netcom.com>
Cc: <xml-dev@xml.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2000 9:06 AM
Subject: Re: Gutenberg Project <longish>


> Frank Boumphrey writes:
>
> > The aim is to develop DTD's be suitable for: Books Poetry Plays
> > Saga's Diaries Compendiums Letters Mixed content *Atlases
> > *Encyclopedias Dictionaries Historic Documents *Scientific Documents
> > *Parallel Translations Other
>
> <irony>
> you could give this activity a name and call it the Text Encoding
> Initiative. Set up working parties of experts, write detailed
> guidelines in various drafts, produce DTDs and so on?
> It should take perhaps 5 or 6 years?
> </irony>
>
> I'd be interested in a detailed technical rebuttal of why the TEI does not
> already provide exactly you need.
>
> Sebastian Rahtz
>


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