HCMC Blogs

Working on DVPP; had to make all XML valid against new schema rules.

Today's meeting was productive, and following it I implemented a process for reporting on the main rhyme-scheme of a poem and variant stanzas that don't follow it. This threw up a couple of issues which I fixed with Schematron and cleanup. I've also re-worked the way the page-image pops up when you mouse over it, and parameterized the URLs used in building poems so that on Jenkins we should (if all goes well) get proper relative links to other site pages, whereas on the local build for encoders, you get fixed links to the Jenkins build. 360 minutes.

995 new page-images (in three different sizes) from the following volume have been added to the Colonial Despatches collection: CO 60 Vol 42 (BC 1870 Public Offices and Miscellaneous). These will now be linked into the transcription documents.

666 new page-images (in three different sizes) from the following volume have been added to the Colonial Despatches collection: CO 60 Vol 41 (BC 1870 Despatches to London August to December). These will now be linked into the transcription documents.

Late duty.

Met with JJ and MH to discuss LEMDO framework, plugin, and the anthology overall.

For the LEMDO anthology, we will include everything, even if it is in draft et cetera, and will provide a "two-step" link as per MoEML (i.e. click to view draft, and very obvious THIS IS A DRAFT watermark background). Projects can decide whether or not they want to have that link available on their site or they can hide it using CSS simply (i.e. #showDraftLink {display:none;}). People can still find that page if they know how to construct the URL, or they can even view on the LEMDO site. We may decide to split the LEMDO listing so that you can choose between peer-reviewed, already anthologized, not peer-reviewed, and not yet anthologized documents. 

This is my last blog post working for the HCMC. I want to give you, Dr. Bowman and my successor, some information on what I have done and what direction we should go in concerning the current state if Pausanias. Markup is complete up to 3.19.1. I started at the end of Corinth and have worked my way through the significant part on Sparta. I went into great detail on the placement of structures (temples, tombs, sanctuaries, roads, markets, important locations) within the ancient city of Sparta. I believe the coordinates and detail will be of great use in the future. Continue reading my volume breakdowns for more information on the state of a specific section of Pausanias. 

To my successor: If you are completely new to XML starting to verify Attica for content is a great way to start learning the code. It will start to feel natural soon so don't get frustrated. When I started I knew nothing at all too. Take your time and have fun reading Pausanias. If you want more information on how to properly assess a piece of markup I have a blog post about it that should clarify any questions. The main idea is that you read over a sentence and when you come across a name that has been marked up you go into the appropriate file and double check that is the right person, place or organisation. If you come across something new (with no markup) search them in the file (person in the Pers file etc) and see if they exist already. If not you can make a new entry. Be careful here and read descriptions because sometimes there are 15 people with the same name (looking at you Ptolemy). This is the fun part of the job where you get to do some investigation and research to see if they are new. Okay good luck and don't be afraid to ask Greg any questions about coding, there are no stupid questions.

Attica: Volume 1

This section of the book is finished for both events and people and place mark up. Someone needs to go through it and verify that all the mark up is correct both in terms of XML and the historical accuracy (e.g which Acamas is he talking about in that sentence, there are 3 with descriptions in the Pers file and it may not even be one of them) This is a good place for someone to start learning XML, you can simply read through and get comfortable with the style. There will certainly be mistakes but it is much easier than jumping into uncharted Pausanias. 

Corinth: Volume 2 

This section is complete for mark up of people, places and organisations only! There is no markup for events. If you want to start working on events then this section is where you should start. 2.1.1. This job can be done in two parts. Part one has to go through and decide whether x story is worth being an event. This is something that can be done by someone with no XML markup skills. You should talk to Greg and Dr. Bowman before starting this because there they will be able to help you decide what is worthy of being an event. The second part to this job is actually marking up the events in the Event file. They can be completed as one job, this is just differentiation for someone who isn't going to learn the XML skills but still wants to be a part of the project. If you need an example of how to markup events see Attica or better yet Homer's Illiad because that book is complete and has been verified.

Laconia: Volume 3

This is where the bulk of my hours were spent. I completed up to section 3.19.1. Which is in the southern end of Laconia, as Pausanias moves towards Amyclea. I spend ages placing sanctuaries, graves, tombs and temples within the area surrounding the ancient city of Sparta. The last couple of chapters will be a little gruelling as you need to add more specific places like I did. It doesn't have to be in a great level of detail. If a temple is clearly in the area surrounding a known city you can just put the coordinates somewhere within the city and leave a note saying why it wasn't placed with more accuracy (ex: there wasn't enough information to place the temple of Etis in Boeae so I put it near the centre of the known city). I decided to place them in detail within the city of Sparta because I found some great archaeological sources from before the modern city was built up and because I think it is one of the most important cities in Greek history. The point is that unless you can find resources for southern Laconia, don't bother spinning your wheels as your time can be spent on more important issues. Start at 3.19.1 if you want to head into uncharted territory and start to markup what the algorithm hasn't touched. 

Messenia: Volume 4

This section is untouched for the most part. I accidentally did a days work in there around 4.11. because I was meant to be on 3.11. Pausanias moves away from specific locations and jumps back into history for this one so there will be a lot of lineage and new people to mark up in the area. Should be fun and fairly smooth by comparison to Laconia. 

CSS floats are extensively used in our primary source encoding, and they're now no longer really necessary in many cases (such as forme works). They also cause problems for the PDF generation. I've started a process to remove them, processing away all the right floats used for catchwords. So far the results are pretty good. I'm next going to look at running headers and page numbers. The code was a bit tricky because in some situations I needed to flip the order of forme works, and in others not. 180 minutes.

515 new page-images (in three different sizes) from the following volume have been added to the Colonial Despatches collection: RG7 G8C Vol 16 (British Columbia 1869 Despatches from London). These will now be linked into the transcription documents.

Late duty.