HCMC Blogs

The naming conventions for illustrations in manuscripts are similar to those for books but there are differences:

• subject titles are the same as for print editions, i.e. Heimskringla = Hms
• manuscript titles which are shelf marks receive minimal abbreviation, i.e. Nks 1867 4to = Nks1867
• folium replaces page number plus r = recto or v = verso

I constructed a naming convention for Nks 1867 4to that requires:

• a primary source title, i.e. Prose Edda = PrE
• a miscellaneous designation for material that does not illustrate a scene, i.e. the illustrations of spears in Nks 1867 4to f.111r
• the manuscript title or shelf mark, i.e. Nks 1867 4to = Nks1867
• a provenance identifier, i.e. Danish Royal Library = DRL
• folium number "r" = recto and "v" = verso
• an optional two digit number indicating if there is more than one illustrations on the page, e.g. ill-01

Example: PrE-Nks1867-DRL-098r.jpg

Example: Misc-Nks1867-DRL-111r.jpg

To Do

• create naming conventions for image files of gallery paintings etc.

I began with Snorre Kongesagaer which represents the most complex example because:

• - the first two editions are one year apart with the same text but differences in the illustrations
• - there are revisions, deletions, and new illustrations in the second edition
• - there are differences in illustrations within different copies of the second edition
• - the illustrations were created by six artists
• - there are pages that contain several illustrations by different artists

I constructed a naming convention for Snorre Kongesagaer that requires:

• - a primary source subject title, i.e. Heimskringla = Hms
• - the title of the book, i.e. Snorre Kongesagaer = SKng
• - publication date, i.e. 1st or 2nd ed. = 1899 or 1900
• - a provenance identifier, i.e. UVic copy = UVic; Reykholt copy = RkHt: Oslo copy = Oslo
• the saga or chapter title
• page number
• a number that indicates granularity for multiple images on a page, e.g. ill-01
• - file type

Example: Hms-SKng-Oslo-1899-Yngl-012-ill-01.jpg

Notes and Reflections

• - Snorre Kongesagaer is the Norwegian translation of Heimskringla.
• - I also created a file name for volume 1 of Fr. Winkel Horn’s edition Norges Konge-sagaer, illustrated by Louis Moe, which was published in Denmark in 1896. The Norwegian publisher suppressed this edition by buying it out.
• - details such as the quality of the editions of Snorre Kongesagaer affect whether or not there were page boarders in the edition as well the use of colour but this info can be left to metadata markup
• - Snorre Kongesagaer has been in continuous print since 1899 so there are actually more than two editions. However, I am focusing on the 1st and 2nd editions for my prototype.

To Do

• - Snorre Kongesagaer contains a preface and is divided into 17 sagas, modern editions such as Hollander’s have are divided into 16 sagas. I will include an abbreviation for the individual saga titles in the image file name.
• - I will create a file with a list of primary source subject titles (Heimskringla = Hms, Prose Edda = PrE, Poetic Edda = PoE) as well as the saga titles in Heimskringla, the titles of illustrated manuscripts, and the titles of print editions

We used the Joliet file system as a guideline for maximum file name length, i.e. 128 characters. Joliet is “an extension to the ISO 9660 CD-ROM file format from Microsoft that supports Windows long file names starting with Windows 95. Joliet supports the original 8.3 naming convention for compatibility with DOS and Windows 3.1 and also supports the Unicode character set.”

I will be consulting the Joliet specifications for:

• File Name Length limitations
• Directory Tree Depth limitations
• Directory Name Format limitations

http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/people/chaffee/jolspec.html

JR reported that IE6 was showing the site oddly, which was not unexpected; there's a lot of position: fixed stuff in there, as well as transparent PNGs. My initial response was to write a quick warning message for IE6 users, but on second thoughts I took a look at what would be required to make it work, and ended up creating a conditional comment with a link to a stylesheet that overrides a lot of the existing stuff and uses position: absolute and some other tricks to solve most of the problems. Probably worth a couple of hours. Had to install IES4Linux, which doesn't really work very well (IE7 won't load pages, and IE6 freezes every now and then and has to be killed and restarted), but it's the only real option for IE6 testing.

Also worked on the print stylesheet, aimed mainly at the Program page. This is now pretty good, especially if the user knows how to turn off annoying headers and footers, and turn on background colours, in their browser print dialog. I might add instructions for this at some point.

Spent a long time setting up and testing backup scripts today, and also doing kernel updates and testing VirtualBox to make sure my VM hadn't got hosed. No problems, but it all takes time.

Started working through the examples in Collective Intelligence, learning Python syntax as I go, and trying to figure out similarity metrics. The math is beyond me, especially when it comes to the more complicated metrics like Jaccard Coefficients or Tanimoto Scores, but given that I can disentangle the arithmetic of the algorithms, I don't really need to understand why they do what they do. I might work on a Delphi application in parallel to the Python, so that I'm forced to re-code the examples in a way that makes me understand them.

Updated the TRecentFiles class to use ADOM for saving/loading, and also simplified the constructor (there were two of them, but one was actually enough).

Starting working out the graphics needs for e.g. IMT, and found that Delphi 2009 has built-in support for JPEG, PNG and GIF (add JPEG, PNGImage and GIFImg to the uses clause respectively). TIFF and other formats are not supported, though, so I found a port of GraphicEx to Delphi 2009; adding this to the uses clause adds lots of formats including TIFF (but it generates lots of warnings about "unsafe code"). I think adding GraphicEx before the other graphics units in the uses clause will ensure that Delphi code is used for those formats which are handled natively, while GraphicEx code is used for other formats it can handle.

DP asked if there were any way to force the registration and schedule pages to "automatically update" (i.e. user always sees what's on the server and not what's in the browser cache). Simplest solution seemed to me to add appropriate tags to the head of relevant files, so that's what I did:
<meta http-equiv="cache-control" content="no-cache">
<meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache">
Also explained to him briefly some of the different ways sites have of updating themselves automatically (e.g. ex.com money exchange site, news sites) and what the pros and cons of those are.

All three of us spent half an hour discussing AT's project and presentation, and preparing some feedback looking forward to the March 15 presentation, as requested.

Two book reviews came in from H. Marked them up and posted them for proofing.