re: [gutvol-d] I'm sorry but I don't get it... (the reprise)
john said:
Please picture this scenario:
I'm a volunteer who has scanned a public-domain book and wants to make it available through the PG distribution mechanism (free of charge, available until the Internet collapses under the weight of spam and next-generation pornography, yadda, yadda, yadda).
Today, if I can convert this book to plain text (according to some stated formatting conventions), I may submit the book. If I'm ambitious, I can create an HTML version, which presents the same information, but allows "real" formatting rather than _italic_ and *bold*.
In the background, however, there is this Whole New World(tm) of semantic tagging, which presumably will allow the book to make snacks and provide entertainment during the reading process. But, for me, as a volunteer, who spends a considerable amount of time working on books, but enjoys actually finishing one and seeing it posted, I can't get my arms around the benefits.
Except for recognizing the acronyms, I am agnostic to XML/ZML/TEI/ABC/EIEIO.
Could someone please explain the benefit of semantic tagging and why it won't horribly lengthen the amount of time required to produce an eBook?
Thank you.
well? -bowerbird
Bowerbird@aol.com wrote:
Could someone please explain the benefit of semantic tagging and why it won't horribly lengthen the amount of time required to produce an eBook?
well?
This has already been discussed at great length. He can go to the archives to read it up. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org
Marcello Perathoner wrote:
Bowerbird@aol.com wrote:
Could someone please explain the benefit of semantic tagging and why it won't horribly lengthen the amount of time required to produce an eBook?
You'll need about one hour to add very basic level TEI tagging to a simple work, such as a novel. For scientific works with loads of tables, footnotes, foreign citations, and numerous cross references, it can take several days, but they will be increasingly required to be able to handle such works at all. The learning curve for basic TEI is not too steep, and can be learned as easy as HTML in a few hours, then as you encounter more difficult constructs, you can gradually absorb more of the stuff. For books requiring special things, we will probably end up having specialists. Important in this stage is that we will have tools available such that people can easily validate what they are doing. Jeroen.
On Sun, 31 Oct 2004 16:46:36 +0100, Jeroen Hellingman <jeroen@bohol.ph> wrote: | Marcello Perathoner wrote: | | > Bowerbird@aol.com wrote: | > | >>> Could someone please explain the benefit of semantic tagging and | >>> why it won't horribly lengthen the amount of time required to | >>> produce an eBook? | >> | | You'll need about one hour to add very basic level TEI tagging to a | simple work, such as a novel. For scientific works with loads of tables, | footnotes, foreign citations, and numerous cross references, it can take | several days, but they will be increasingly required to be able to | handle such works at all. | | The learning curve for basic TEI is not too steep, and can be learned as | easy as HTML in a few hours, then as you encounter more difficult | constructs, you can gradually absorb more of the stuff. For books | requiring special things, we will probably end up having specialists. | | Important in this stage is that we will have tools available such that | people can easily validate what they are doing. Last time I marked up a text by hand was, Hmmmm 19 years ago using nroff, and a great pain in the **** it was. Then someone invented WYSYWYG (What You See is What You Get), and producing properly laid out text became a doddle. Surely you are not suggesting that we go back the Dark Ages, nay Neolithic times? Which Windoze WYSIWYG application produces TEI tagging, to whatever standard PG proposes? -- Dave F
participants (4)
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Bowerbird＠aol.com -
Dave Fawthrop -
Jeroen Hellingman -
Marcello Perathoner