xml-dev - Re: Gutenberg Project <longish>

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

> You imply here that the scholars language is by definition not
> suitable for lesser mortals. Why should that necessarily be so?

Spoken like a true 'dark blue'!!:>)

Those of us who are older were forced to mix with others during conscription
(Read draft for US readers) after coming down. We were left with no
illusions that the language we had been using at Oxbridge was not the
language of most of the rest of the world! Lecturing at 'extension colleges'
also reinforced this intial surmise.

> well, I think its designers would not recognize that statement

One thing I have not been able to find in the TEI documentation is a
requirements list or it's equivalent. If you could point me to one i would
be grateful.

>
> so, use the the extension mechanism, if you want sugared input
>

Not available in teixlite, but I am working on this (see another posting of
mine)

> eh? whatever are you getting at? what current XML browsers, for
> starters? obviously you can use XSL in IE5. Obviously no-one in their
> right minds would use CSS anyway, because the implementations are so
> broken. Do you want to make your DTD on the basis of broken browsers
> as of March 2000?

I said it was aspurious argument, but our volunteers have a need to be able
to view their out put now. Actually the new Gecko browser does a good job of
displaying this construct.

> what is "easily"? which documents do you know exist but cannot get at?

A web site with a list of documents that display in applications available
to the general world wide masses.

<rant>Great literature should be freely available to every one regardless of
their education, ethnic or economic background.</rant>

frank
----- Original Message -----
From: Sebastian Rahtz <sebastian.rahtz@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk>
To: <bckman@ix.netcom.com>
Cc: <xml-dev@xml.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2000 4:01 AM
Subject: Re: Gutenberg Project <longish>


> Frank Boumphrey writes:
>  > I think one of the things being lost in this argument is that TEI was
>  > poriginally designed for annotation of documents for carrying out
scholarly
>  > research. As such it is truly without peer. What is needed is a smaller
>  > simpler more intuitive language.
>
> You imply here that the scholars language is by definition not
> suitable for lesser mortals. Why should that necessarily be so?
>
>  > It was not really designed for the marking up of common texts for
display
>  > and reading.
> well, I think its designers would not recognize that statement
>
>  > Look at the following three examples of the opening of Moby Dick. TEI,
>  > gutbook, and XHTML
> ...
>
>  > Which of these examples is the more intuitive?
>  >
> the XHTML is obviously silly. I don't see the gut one and the TEI
> differing that much
>
>  > IMO (and that of nearly all my students) The TEI markup is NOT as
intuitive
>  > as the  second markup, it uses a lot of generic headings such as 'div'
head,
>  > only one kind of note etc.
>
> so, use the the extension mechanism, if you want sugared input
>
>  > Because TEI relies on attributes to differentiate segments it cannot be
>  > displayed with a style sheet on current XML browsers
>  >  div[type="chapter"]{font-size:14pt;} is not supported).
>
> eh? whatever are you getting at? what current XML browsers, for
> starters? obviously you can use XSL in IE5. Obviously no-one in their
> right minds would use CSS anyway, because the implementations are so
> broken. Do you want to make your DTD on the basis of broken browsers
> as of March 2000?
>
>  > I must confess that when it comes to ease of use I am not a fan of TEI,
but
>  > I do see its tremendous worth, not least of which is that there is a
ton of
>  > documents marked up in TEI. Now if only they were made _easily_
available to
>  > the general public.....!!
>
> what is "easily"? which documents do you know exist but cannot get at?
>
> sebastian
>


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