HCMC Blogs

On DZ's instructions, added a note that registration is now open on a couple of pages, and also a conditional comment for IE6 and below that warns that the browser can't display the site properly, and suggests alternative browsers.

Following our project meeting last week, I've rewritten the Upcoming Task list, adding rough estimates of hours required. The total for finishing 1858 comes to about 550 hours or so.

On late duty.

Pat finished the 1858 schedules, although some entries don't yet link to documents (some need adding to the db). I integrated the changes into the db. He's also been working on the GUI again, tweaking the header and menu, and the results of that have also been integrated. It looks much more attractive as a result.

Before getting back into the difficulties of Replace, I decided to get my head back into the code by tackling the relatively simpler FindAll functionality, which involves retrieving and storing a KWIC-style display for the user, who can then double-click on individual hits to view them in the GUI. Got this working fairly well, although one bug remains: the WholeWordOnly setting doesn't seem to be passed through, or if it is passed through, it doesn't seem to be honoured by the FindNext function. This needs to be fixed. I should also test the MatchCase parameter.

For French site, started by testing the connection keys to make sure they'd work. In doing that I discovered that the professor pages and dt dd elements, which Contribute can't deal with, so I changed all those to ul and li elements. Contribute indented each li relative to the one before it, making the page illegible. It did the same thing with lists created in Contribute. So, I decided to make the lists of publications simply p tags.

Also added some rules to the css and modified the specifiers for a couple of existing rules. The rules for plain ul and li tags generated styles suitable for the nav bar but not for body content, so I added a specifier to those rules to apply them only in the nav bar object. I added a couple of rules specifically to handle list of li items and p tags in the prof_stuff div, which appears only in the professor pages.

Also tested the keys for the professors to make sure they had the right capabilities - had to add "allow user to publish" to a couple of them.

A few more changes came in from one of the students.

This project raises some interesting issues. Creating a modern Website is really beyond what novices can achieve in a single semester; and using one of the tools that makes it "easy", such as DreamWeaver, is now in itself so complicated that it's more than one would ask of anyone unfamiliar with HTML to learn it in less than a couple of months. People can certainly muddle through, ending up, usually, with a mass of puzzling code which is very difficult to maintain; and with repeated elements such as menus, which ought to be abstracted out and included through PHP, repeated in every page (usually with minor variations). For a temporary project, this is fine, although it does entail a lot of frustration and unproductive use of time. But when the results are intended to be part of a larger project, as they are here, it's more problematic because someone has to come along later, and rationalize the code. In this case, I've done a minimal amount of code-editing, beyond abstracting the common components and building a single stylesheet (instead of the block of style code inserted by DW into every page). Even so, it's taken some hours, and when the site is permanently migrated into VicVic, it will need a fair amount more cleanup.

Fixed the menu bug reported by DP, and also ported the fixes (XSLT, CSS and JS) into the version of the code which is used on the Mariage site. The Mariage code is very similar, except that it uses camelBack notation, in order to match the rest of its code; this raises the issue of whether I should camelBack the IMT code (by which I mean the XHTML, XSLT, JS and CSS used in the Web View).

Some feedback from JL on the site led to the students sending more revisions, which I've now incorporated into the site. There will be a few more additions in the next day or so.

Following some discussion at our recent meeting (still to be blogged), CP has suggested the following as an example of Dublin Core output for a single document:

ID: 754, CO 60/23, p. 345 [link to digitized image]
Title: Correspondence, minutes and other associated documents, Colony of B.C., January 24th, 1865.
Creator: Trutch, Joseph; Great Britain. Office for the Colonies; Carwell ?; Elliot
Description: [Abstract of the letter] Item is a letter written by Trutch to Carwell, January 24, 1865 concerning a request for leave without pay until May 15th. He has been in New York visiting his sick brother and investigating steam traction engines. He will divest himself of all pecuniary interests in public works before becoming Governor of the Colony when he returns to New Westminster in April.
Extent: 1p?
Genre: correspondence, minutes; associated documents
Subject: steam traction engines; conflict of interest; public works
Coverage - Chronological: January, 24, 1865 [written]; January 25, 1865 [received]
Coverage - Geographic: British Columbia, Colony; New Westminster
Publisher: University of Victoria, HCMC?
Is part of: CO60/23
Contributor; Elliott; TFE
Date: January, 1865
Language: eng
Type of Material: StillImage; Text
Scale: [maps only]
Coordinates: GIS for place names?
Coverage - Related: Draft reply, Cardwell to Seymour, No. 6, 18 February 1865; Rogers to Trutch, 18 February 1865, granting an extension to his leave of absence, and advising that upon his return to the colony, he must satisfy the governor of his divestiture of "all pecuniary interests in the public works of the Colony."
url: [hidden] http://lettuce.tapor.uvic.ca:8081/coldesp/site/getDoc.htm?id=B656T01.scx&search=trutch#searchHit1
Use rights: ?Transcriptions may only be used by permission of the publisher.?
Date - Digitized 2008-05-21 ? [optional]
Date modified 2009-01-10 ? [optional]