Me too post for this.
August 27, 2007
Greg and I had a long and fruitful meeting with Dr. Amaral. The code for his Portuguese front-end is now available, and Greg will set him up as a TAPoR user so that he can copy it onto the SAN to run the project off Lettuce. Meanwhile, the Python version on Lettuce is too old (it's 2.2, and we need at least 2.4, and might as well have 2.5). The sysops are reluctant to run Mod Python so we'll try running the project with Python in CGI mode, once Python is updated; if that doesn't work, we may have to tweak the code, or if that's too complicated, insist on Mod Python.
Meanwhile, we need to do some long-term planning for the project, and the first stages are to clarify intellectual property issues, look for available lexicons (free if possible) for Spanish, French and German, and put together a team. We're discussing the possibility of using HotPot as a front-end authoring system, with Moodle as a back-end delivery platform to handle logins etc. Moodle can talk to Python modules, according to Greg, so we'd basically be looking at creating a Moodle module or modules that would act as an interface to the Python back-end that would deliver the exercises and feedback, and track the results. There's a lot to learn on all sides here, but if we do it right, we may be able to generate a lot of useful research data on CALL feedback, in multiple languages.
JT had marked up the first vol 17 article using the P5 output from the site as a guide, rather than a P4 document, so I did a basic conversion using XSLT, and some more tweaks with XPath searches and XSLT transforms to fix regular departures from the P4 DTD; then I went through the result and made all the corrections from the printed copy generated from the P5. This article is nearly done, but will need proofing once more; I suspect there are still some problems with the biblio.
Five unfinished documents have been removed from the DB so they don't show up on the site. I've also moved them out of my xml\texts folder, and put them into xml\unfinished, so future updates don't upload them again by mistake.
August 24, 2007
Meeting called by KL about web2.uvic.ca at 2.30; I'll be leaving from there directly, so we locked up the office.
Wrote the XSLT for testing whether there's a truncated title available or not, and using it; if there isn't, the original truncation algorithm still runs on the main title. The code occurs in two places, once for the doc list and once for the thumbnail image that pops up when you click on the title; each could be handled differently if necessary.
Left early to get Claire at end of science camp.
Prepared a rough estimate of tasks and time required to go from WP source files to collection of text files representing tables for inclusion in sql database. Will need samples of the WP files to see exactly how Simon has encoded the information in his files and thus what code will need to be written to generate consistently structured records with all the fields properly distinguished. Sent that to Simon for inclusion in a grant application. More precise estimate depends on analysis of electronic documents from Simon.
Added some detailed licensing info to the Welcome page, pointing at the Creative Commons licence, and also added attribution to the BN at the bottom of every image (by adding it into the XSLT that generates the image pages).
Claire will send me shortened versions of titles where required, with normalized case (probably sentence case), and I'll add a new title element in the header, inside the <biblStruct> element used for indexing in the TOC, like this:
<title type="trunc">Arrest contre les chastrez</title>
The TOC XSLT will then look for that element, and use it if it's there; failing that, it will use the main title.
All the XML tags we're currently using in the body text are now handled, including all the <hi> variants, <mentioned>, <term>, <soCalled>, etc. Images are also handled -- they show up with a class which will constrain their size, but they are also links to the full image. There's a slight oddity with the way FF shows images when they're not part of a document, though; I've posted a query on the Cocoon list about that.
Notes are handled as in the Mariage site, except that they're simpler (no refs to annotations to handle). The JS that pops them up will follow the model of that on EMLS.
Actually, I'm wondering if we could manage to handle note links (from markers to actual notes) in a couple of ways, depending on whether JavaScript is turned on. We could default to a straight link (<a> tag) which would bounce you down the page to the note in the note list; then, on page load, if JS is turned on we could have a function which iterates through all the note links, and hides the <a> tag, inserting another tag right after it which pops up the note in the right margin, as on EMLS. This would be elegant and flexible.