| Important Note |
The group assignment and the documentation of the markup guidelines should be handed in no later than 31 May 2002 both on CD-Rom and per email <evanhoutte@kantl.be>. The CD-Rom should be sent to: Edward Vanhoutte |
| Lecturer: | Edward Vanhoutte CTB - Centrum voor Teksteditie en Bronnenstudie Koningstraat 18 / b-9000 Gent tel: +32 (0)9 265.93.51 / fax: +32 (0)9 265.93.49 evanhout@uia.ua.ac.be |
| Time: | Monday 9-12u.30. - 2nd semester 2001-2002 |
| Contents: | The use of electronic texts in all areas of current society and all disciplines of both the Humanities and the hard sciences is increasing enourmously. Together with this trend, the problems attached to the use and interchange of electronic texts become more prominent: software- and platform-incompatibility, loss of data in converting files, problems of arciving, creation, use, etc. This course addresses these problems and focuses on the problematic position of electronic texts in the humanities. The student can also expect an introduction in the history and evolution of electronic publication media such as the Internet. In formal lectures and seminars, we draw the attention to the creation and publication of electronic texts, and gain hand-on experience in using international accepted standards for text-encoding and markup - SGML, HTML, XHTML, CSS, XML, XSL, TEI, OEB (Open eBook). This course introduces tools and techniques which will be used by the students to produce an electronic publication. This year, the publication will be a web-edition of De Leeuw van Vlaenderen by Hendrik Conscience. |
| Pre-required knowledge: |
An elementary computer literateness is required (know how to work with multiple windows, work with the mouse, create folders and files, download files from the internet), but an introductory session my be organised for students who are not up to elementary standards. This course is taught in English. |
| Onderwijsvorm: | Formal lectures and seminars with preparation. |
| Examination: | Permanent evaluation and group assignment. Only students who take part in all of the evaluation moments will be eligible to receive marks on this course. |
| Required reading: |
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| Credits: | This course counts for 4 ECTS credits, which equals a 120 hour workload. This is organized as follows:
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Week 1 (11 February): Introduction Humanities Computing - History of the Internet - Hypertext - Introduction to Markup Languages. |
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| Format | Formal lecture |
| Preparation |
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| Required reading |
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| Further reading |
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Week 2 (18 February): Document Analysis - Markup - Text Encoding - SGML/XML - DTD. |
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| Format | Seminar |
| Preparation |
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| Required reading |
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| Course material | |
| Further reading |
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Week 3 (25 February): No Class |
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| Assignment | Organise a survey amongst literature staff and students and ask about their envisioned use of electronic texts. Try to single out these characteristics which could translate to markup. Oral report in Week 4 (with figures). This survey and report will be translated into markup guidelines for the group assignment. |
| Required reading |
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Week 4 (4 March): XML - TEI Hands-on |
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| Format | Seminar |
| Required reading | Come well prepared and read: |
| Downloads |
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| Installation |
NoteTab Light is a very complete plain text editor which allows you to create SGML, XML, (X)HTML, CSS etc. documents. Download the software on your computer and unzip the file with an Unzip programma (e.g. WinZip). Double click the Setup.exe file and follow the install shield guidance. Once installed, run the programma and select View > Options > File Filters. Select "New", and add the next details
Repeat this operation for each file format you want to add to the software, e.g. CSS. Download teixlite.clb and save (with .clb extension!) in NoteTab Light/Libraries. The Tab "teixlite" will now appear in the tab-bar at the bottom of the programme window. Click to activate the library which will appear in the left margin. |
| Further reading |
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Week 5 (11 March): XML - TEI Hands-on |
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| Format | Seminar |
| Assignment | Make a document analysis of the first chapter of De Leeuw van Vlaenderen, combine this with your own insights in markup usability and the results of your survey. Mail me a list of the teixlite elements and attributes which should be used in encoding the novel according to you before Saturday night, March 9. Non-Dutch speaking students should make a document analysis of any piece of fictional prose in their own language. These reports will function as a blueprint for the project encoding guidelines we need to write in week 5. |
| Required reading | |
| Downloads | |
| Installation |
Download the binaries for Windows 95 en Windows NT and unzip and extract in a SP folder which you create. The setup creates three folders: bin, doc and pubtext. You can find the parser (nsgmls) in the bin folder. Next, download the Runsp2 windows interface for nsgmls. Unzip the file in the bin folder of SP. By running runsp2.exe, runsp2 wil find nsgmls. Read runsp.txt carefully. Copy the next files in the same bin folder: Specify where nsgmls can find the catalog file under Options in the toolbar of runsp2. Specify where nsgmls can find xml.dcl under Options in the toolbar of runsp2. Download and save teixlite.clb (with .clb extension!) in NoteTab Light/Libraries. The Tab "teixlite" will now appear in the tab-bar at the bottom of the programme window. Click to activate the library which will appear in the left margin. |
Week 6 (18 March): XML - TEI Hands-on |
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| Format | Seminar |
| Assignment | Check, correct and validate the file error.xml using nsgmls, either with Emacs, or with the Runsp windows interface. When parsing the file with the latter tool, OK the message "invalid line or column" and press the "Next error" button which will take you to the first error. |
| Group project |
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| TEI U5 and teixlite | Please note that TEI U5 defines teilite in terms of SGML. Teixlite is XML, this means that you will have to adapt your encoding practice to next rules of thumb:
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Week 7 (25 March): Stylesheet languages - CSS - XSL |
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| Format | Seminar |
| Tools | |
| Downloads |
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| Further reading |
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Week 8 (15 April): No Class - workweek. |
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| Assignment | Group assignment |
Week 9 (22 April): Digitization. What, why, how, OCR & imaging. |
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| Format | Formal lecture and Seminar |
| Required reading |
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| Further reading |
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Week 10 (29 April): HTML 4.01 / XHTML 1.0 - hands-on & Documentary "Into the Future" |
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| Format | Seminar |
| Required reading | |
| Tools | W3C HTML Validation Service |
| Downloads |
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| Further reading |
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XHTML author: Edward Vanhoutte
Last Revision: 06/08/2002