GG: IoN transcript

[Mary Jo Watts <mwatts@rci.rutgers.edu>]

F_Minorians:

Those of you who run Windows can, after downloading a free SGML
browser called Panorama Free, view a beta of a transcript I've done of
_The Idea of North_.

* Technical instructions for downloading and installing Panorama Free
are available on WWW page constructed for another SGML project I've
done with my co-worker, Wendell Piez:
	http://www.ceth.rutgers.edu/projects/hercproj/front.htm

* Once you have Panorama Free installed and configured to run with
your browser, you can access the beta transcript of _Idea of North_ here:
	http://www.ceth.rutgers.edu/projects/hercproj/mjw/ion.sgm


NOTE: THIS PROJECT IS FOR DEMONSTRATION AND RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY. 
Sorry to shout, but I'm just a grad student who doesn't mean to
offend any copyright holders with good lawyers. 
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For those of you unfamiliar with SGML-- it's Standard Generalized
Mark-up Language-- a platform-independent way of organizing electronic
information.  For example, in word processors you highlight "The Idea
of North" and make it bold, 18 point Garamond, center it and your
reader knows it's a title.  In SGML, you put a tag around "The Idea of
North" like this:

	<TITLE>The Idea of North</TITLE> 

and then *later* you use the software of your choice (more software
choices on more operating platforms are imminent) to render <title>s
in any font, color, point size or position you desire, and you only
have to give the instruction once and each <title> changes. Those of
you who work with HTML will recognize the tag scheme because HTML is
the implimentation of SGML which powers the WWW (and, unfortuantely,
allows you to encode texts much the way a word processor does.)
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Why I've used SGML for this transcript:

	* I'm writing my dissertation on the _Solitude Trilogy_ and I
	  want these transcripts to be in an electronic form
          which will outlive my current machines, disk drives,
	  and hopefully even me. (Remember the 8-track! All that
	  great music you can't access any more...)

	* Because I'm writing my diss on the trilogy, I want an
	  electronic, searchable version of these scripts that also contain
	  records of my reading history of them, and details about the
	  structure of the aural artifact. (I can search for words
	  spoken by a specific participant that are really quotations
	  from other conversations they're making up, for example.)

	* I can render information in the tags which are not part of
	  the ACTUAL text but are part of the MEANING of the text. 
		
		Example:
		<U WHO="MS" SEX="F" LANG="Canadian English" N=":03"> I was
		fascinated by the country as such...</U> 
	  
	  This means that an utterence (<U>) is being spoken by woman (SEX="F")
	  I've identified previously in my document as "MS,"
	  (Marianne Schroeder, the nurse in IoN). She is speaking in
	  Canadian English at the count of ":03" on the audio CD and she
	  says:	"I was fascinated by the country as such..." You can
	  tag any feature of the document you wish.  In this beta,
	  I've chosen to tag proper names and certain lingustic
	  features. 
	 
	* Sometime in the future, software will allow me to render the
	  overlapping voices as text which is linked to the audio file.

	* Etc. If anyone wants more info-- feel free to contact me.

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Happy browsing, suggestions welcome!

Mary Jo,
mwatts@rci.rutgers.edu