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How the SOL was bornThe following e-mails relating to the idea of an On-line Suda were originally posted on the "Classics-l" listserv (current address: classics-l@lsv.uky.edu), managed at that time by Linda Wright. These excerpts were drawn from the Classics-l archive at http://omega.cohums.ohio-state.edu/mailing_lists/CLA-L. Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 11:43:28 -0600 (CST) From: Jeffrey Gibson To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: The Suda I've probably asked this before, so please forgive duplicate postings. Is there an English translation of the Suda? Jeffrey Gibson ---- Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 21:39:00 -0600 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: Peter Green Subject: Re: The Suda >I've probably asked this before, so please forgive duplicate postings. > >Is there an English translation of the Suda? > >Jeffrey Gibson >jgibson@acfsysv.roosevelt.edu The questions's been asked before on this list, too, and the answer, alas, is No. Why? Were you thinking of filling the gap? A lot of people would be grateful, I suspect. PMG ------ Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 11:21:27 -0500 (EST) To: classics@u.washington.edu From: William Hutton Subject: Re: The Suda At 09:39 PM 1/14/98 -0600, you wrote: >>I've probably asked this before, so please forgive >>duplicate postings. >> >>Is there an English translation of the Suda? >> >>Jeffrey Gibson >>jgibson@acfsysv.roosevelt.edu > >The questions's been asked before on this list, too, >and the answer, alas,is No. Why? Were you thinking of >filling the gap? A lot of people would be grateful, I >suspect. > >PMG > Since translating the Suda would be a task requiring greater chalcenterocity than most individual classicists possess, perhaps we should make it a group project. It would in fact be the ideal sort of thing to put on a web site somewhere (DM, are you listening?). Each of us could send in our favorite entries by e-mail. Bill ----- Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 10:42:15 -0600 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: Elizabeth Vandiver Subject: Re: The Suda Sounds good to me--I claim *ikria*. EV ----- Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 16:24:57 -0600 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: Peter Green Subject: Re: The Suda > >Since translating the Suda would be a task requiring greater chalcenterocity >than most individual classicists possess, perhaps we should make it a >group project. It would in fact be the ideal sort of thing to put on >a web site somewhere (DM, are you listening?). Each of us >could send in our favorite entries by e-mail. > >Bill This strikes me as a perfectly splendid idea. Quite apart from in the end fulfilling, collectively, a collective need, it surely offers the perfect ever-ready escape from more pressing or worrisome tasks: when you want to relax with a good conscience, translate a Suda entry and bang it in! Seriously, if David [Meadows] or someone would set up a web-site, that would be a good beginning. What we'd need then would be two editors: one American (in the widest sense: Canada to Tierra del Fuego), one European. Next, a good bit of publicity to bring the project to people's attention. A master-list of willing offers, by names and entries. If all the major entries went to experts, minor ones could be distributed, under guidance, to junior faculty or even experienced graduate students. Adler's edition is first-rate, and used as the TLG text, which would facilitate collation enormously. Is anyone else as genuinely excited by this idea as I am (and, I would think, Bill and Elizabeth)? And if so, can we take practical action? PMG ----- From: Joe Farrell To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: The Suda I cannot think of a better collaborative enterprise, nor of a better way to create and distribute the product than via WWW. May I suggest that there is also an opportunity to organize a number of graduate seminars around this objective? This would speed the work and lend excellent focus to the training of young scholars. ----- From: "Steven J. Willett" To: classics@u.washington.edu Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 18:59:25 +0000 Subject: Re: The Suda Creating a web site for the Suda translation is quite easy. I could generate one in about an hour. The actual HTML layout is the least of the problems. There are some other key issues that need to be addressed first. Here are a few obvious ones. David Meadows and Laval Hunsucker can probably supplement them with more. 1. Will the editors (PMG suggests two, one in the Americas and one in Europe) handle HTML or only oversee the project and maintain stylistic consistency, leaving the markup to a separate specialist? There are advantages and disadvantages to either approach, but it is unlikely that an expert in the period will want to bother himself with the technical business of actually turning text from various word processors, sent by various email attachment systems, into HTML. One should never underestimate the commitment in time it takes just to manage a worldwide net of translators, check their work for accuracy against the original, query the authors about problems and finally meld all the diverse texts into stylistic conformity. 2. Should the text be published directly in HTML or first converted to Adobe's Acrobat format for the most professional appearance? A large proportion, probably a majority, of the subscription electronic journals in the sciences and humanities use Acrobat for readability and ease of printing. But Acrobat also requires the user to have their free reader. 3. Should the project seek sponsorship from an organization like the APA? That might be one way both to advertise it and to lay the groundwork for some future funding. 4. How would translators be selected? A selection process of the sort PMG envisaged would eliminate any notion of a project freely open to all comers. Attractive as that might seem, a free-for-all is completely unworkable. Human nature being what it is, and deadlines what they are, some sort of fairly strict schedule would have to be maintained (Adler's _Suidae Lexicon_, reprinted in 1971 from the 1935 Teubner, is in five volumes after all). And the people responsible for maintaining it couldn't simply wait about for material to drift in randomly. 5. What sort of notes, commentary or cross-references might we want to include in such a translation? Electronic publication has essentially no limits on size, but does have serious limitations on editorial time. Let me raise a test case. In _Suidae Lexicon_ IV.644-46 we have an important entry on Hypatia. The entry is garbled, partly because it wasn't an original composition but a conflation of two earlier sources. The best discussion of the sources is (a) P. Tannery, "L'article de Suidas sur Hypatie", Annales de la facult=E9 des lettres de Bordeaux 2 (1880), pp. 197-200 and (b) K. Praechter's article on Hypatia in _Paulys Realencyclop=E4die der Alterumwissenschaft_ (Stuttgart: Druckenmuller, 1914). Ought the translators and/or editors include citations or cross-references of this sort? They would vastly increase the translation's utility, but vastly increase the time and effort to produce it. 6. Who would hold copyright? Would some corporate entity hold copyright, but permit free use of the translation so long as it was not altered in any way? This is the policy of Didaskalia and Versification among a number of other electronic publications. At any rate, the publisher would want to secure an ISSN. 7. If the server is based in the US, ought there be mirror sites in Europe and Asia? If so, who handles the ongoing coordination of these sites: an independent web wizard or the project editors? That takes us back to item #1 above. This is a project crying to be done if the practical issues can be settled in a timely and efficient way. ----- To: classics@u.washington.edu From: David Meadows Subject: Suda Scripsit WH: >Since translating the Suda would be a task requiring greater chalcenterocity >than most individual classicists possess, perhaps we should make it a >group project. It would in fact be the ideal sort of thing to put on >a web site somewhere (DM, are you listening?). Each of us >could send in our favorite entries by e-mail. Hey ... I'm always game for this sort of thing; let's do it! But let's do it right: translation - text (in Greek, obviously) - *and* bibliography for each entry. This is where electronic publishing can prove its mettle (i.e. the bibliography will never be out of date; it can be augmented as new work is done) ... indeed, why not have an associated hyperlinked electronic journal as well; surely translating the Suda will lead to more scholarl papers ... dm (who also thinks we should be thinking about how much webspace such a thing would need) ----- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 07:44:37 -0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: David Meadows Subject: Suda A followup: the project will, of course, have to be named SOL (Suda On Line), so we can havve a nifty sun graphic as logo ... dm ----- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 15:19:22 +0200 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: xpolakis@hol.gr (Antreas P. Hatzipolakis) Subject: Re: Suda >A followup: the project will, of course, have to be named SOL (Suda On >Line), so we can havve a nifty sun graphic as logo ... > >dm Akoma den ton eidame kai Giannh ton ebgalame! :-)) aph ----- From: Kenneth Kitchell To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: The Suda On Thu, 15 Jan 1998, Joe Farrell wrote: > I cannot think of a better collaborative enterprise, nor of a better way > to create and distribute the product than via WWW. May I suggest that > there is also an opportunity to organize a number of graduate seminars > around this objective? This would speed the work and lend excellent > focus to the training of young scholars. I think all these suggestions are terrific. I would like to add one cautionary note, however. Such a project is likely to be done once and once only. Quality control is of great concern so that the project becomes a vehicle for fostering the dissemination of information and not mis-information. It thus sounds like an ideal project wherein someone applied for grant money and obtained a bit of release time to organize the work and control the outcome. I would also think that the sponsorship of a major scholarly organization would be useful. Ken Kitchell ----- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 12:01:18 +0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: James Butrica Subject: Re: The Suda And another thought: the original suggestion, for people to translate their favourite entries, is not going to work, since it would require too much supervision to make sure that everything got covered and some entries might languish untouched (not everybody is as interested in Iophon as I am, for example). But if each letter were taken by one translator, with additional translators for the letters like alpha that have many entries, it could be done in a relatively expeditious manner. Si monumentum requiris ... JLB James Lawrence Peter Butrica ----- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 08:59:47 -0600 (CST) From: Jeffrey Gibson To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: The Suda It was, it appears, my recent question on the Suda and Peter Green's response asking if I'd like to translate it, that has set the SOL project rolling. Might I add a warning however? Some time ago I also suggested that the list produce a "Classics Danker", and enthusiasm to do so was initially high. But it never got off the ground. It seems to me, then, that that the project should begin IMMEDIATELY. Let those who want to contribute their favourite entries do so now. Duplication can always be sorted out later. And let those who want to make edit and organize submit their names now. This, too, can be sorted later. The important thing is that the ball gets rolling! So, in pursuit of my own interests, who is going to do the entry on PEIRAZW/PEIRASMOS? Jeffrey Gibson ----- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 10:50:16 -0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: Ross Scaife Subject: Suidae Lexicon Suggested readings for the people who would take charge of this mega commitment: 1) Guidelines for Electronic Scholarly Editions by the MLA Committee on Scholarly Editions (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/MLA/intro.html) September of 1997 2) Peter Shillingsburg's General Principles for Electronic Scholarly Editions (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/MLA/principles.html) December 1993 3) Greg Crane, The Perseus Project and Beyond: How Building a Digital Library Challenges the Humanities and Technology (http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january98/01crane.html) January 1998 best wishes, Ross ----- From: jfarrell@sas.upenn.edu (Joseph Farrell) Subject: Re: Suda To: classics@u.washington.edu Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 11:33:12 -0500 (EST) Are you thinking of seeking sponsorship from Sun Microsystems? > > A followup: the project will, of course, have to be named SOL (Suda On > Line), so we can havve a nifty sun graphic as logo ... > > dm > ----- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 11:43:01 -0500 From: Ernie Moncada To: Classics@U.Washington.edu Subject: Suda I applaud the enthusiasm of all who would like to see an English translation of the Suda get under way. And most of those who would like to see such a work are, for the most part, not unaware (as some few have sketched for us already) of the massive labor a project of that sort would entail. Even the "SOL" logo would underscore the sweat that such a task would call forth.(Given so hidrotic an undertaking, doubtlessly the myriad workshops-or offices-of selfless volunteers would become, figuratively and literally, SUDAtoria. I recall this thread having been spun some years ago, at which time, if memory serves me, Mike Chase described the proposed task as "Quixotic or Borgesian," and indeed it may well be such. Has the entire Suda been translated yet into any other language? Isn't there a Latin version? What we need is a deep-pocketed lover of literature to finance translations of not only the Suda but of Stobaeus, Photius, Tzetzes, Eustathius and other such fascinating Byzantine writers. I don't know of any such patrons, but I am keeping my eyes open. Of course, if the project actually gets under way, count me in. EJM ----- From: jfarrell@sas.upenn.edu (Joseph Farrell) Subject: Re: Suda To: classics@u.washington.edu Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 12:33:18 -0500 (EST) The best is often the enemy of the good, and this is especially true in the case of mammoth projects such as a Suda translation. One of the things I like about WWW is that the medium can ameliorate this problem: a quick and dirty Suda can be continuously upgraded into something truly first-rate, given time and enough willing hands. But the quick and dirty starter version has its uses too, not least in giving potential sponsors an idea about what you might have in mind. What I'm driving at is that we might spend a liftime designing the perfect SOL before word one became available. How about getting volunteers to work on a relatively short letter like B (about 70 columns in LSJ) or Z (20 columns) instead of A (600 columns). I have no Suda handy, and am assuming that the space allotted to each letter will be roughly proportional to LSJ. Anyway, I am sure that someone has enough disk space to hold the work (our CCAT would probably be happy to serve as host), which could be organized in terms of file directories, one per letter of the Greek alphabet, each directory containing one file for each lemma; UNIX directories work well when they have no more than about 256 files in them, so there might someday need to be more than one directory for each of the more prolific letters. This would be a truly quick and dirty structure, but with a little programming it could become very flexible, and it could also be improved in all sorts of ways over time. But getting something up and running would demonstrate bona fides and probably attract other contributors as well. ----- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 19:54:41 +0200 (EET) From: Ivo Volt To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Suda On Fri, 16 Jan 1998, Ernie Moncada wrote: > I recall this thread having been spun some years ago, at which time, > if memory serves me, Mike Chase described the proposed task as "Quixotic > or Borgesian," and indeed it may well be such. Has the entire Suda been > translated yet into any other language? Isn't there a Latin version? Adler (I.XI-XII) speaks of the edition of Aemilius Portus (1619, 1630) who "versionem Latinam vitiorum plenam adiecit". In RE 2. Reihe, 7. Hlbd (Stuttgart 1931), col. 716.10sqq., we are told: "Robert Grosseteste, Bischof von Lincoln 1235-1253 hat einige meist biographische Artikel und v. IEsous ins Lateinische uebersetzt." Are there any other Latin translations? I don't think there is one into some modern language. Ivo Volt Assistant at the Chair of Classical Philology, Tartu University, Estonia ----- From: Ivo Volt To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Suda On Fri, 16 Jan 1998, Joseph Farrell wrote: > What I'm driving at is that we might spend a liftime designing the perfect > SOL before word one became available. How about getting volunteers to work > on a relatively short letter like B (about 70 columns in LSJ) or Z (20 > columns) instead of A (600 columns). I have no Suda handy, and am assuming > that the space allotted to each letter will be roughly proportional to > LSJ. There are only 197 entries beginning with Z (18 and a half pages in the edition of Adler). Anyway, I am sure that someone has enough disk space to hold the work > (our CCAT would probably be happy to serve as host), which could be > organized in terms of file directories, one per letter of the Greek > alphabet, each directory containing one file for each lemma; UNIX > directories work well when they have no more than about 256 files in them, > so there might someday need to be more than one directory for each of the > more prolific letters. This would be a truly quick and dirty structure, > but with a little programming it could become very flexible, and it could > also be improved in all sorts of ways over time. But getting something up > and running would demonstrate bona fides and probably attract other > contributors as well. I somehow had an idea that the Suda on line could be built up like a dictionary on line, i.e. would be searchable, and not only browsable by directories. I guess this needs stuff like cgi etc. Just a thought: maybe this could be done in cooperation with e.g. Perseus Project? Having Suda look at him every day on a shelf on the left, Ivo Volt Assistant at the Chair of Classical Philology, Tartu University, Estonia ----- From: "Patrick Rourke" Subject: Suda (a little long) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 13:39:32 -0500 A few suggestions for a Suda translation: 1) Remember the lesson Ted Brunner taught us with TLG: get the text down first (or in this case, the translation), and once you have all THAT collected, you can worry about secondary things like commentary. To paraphrase and reorient: do not multiply entities beyond neccessity. As has already been said, a quick and dirty translation in HTML on the web could be upgraded over time into a nice Acrobat-based or even print-based bilingual edition with commentary. One could also worry about a search engine later, after the text is done. 2) Structure: have 1 general editor and perhaps 15 editors, each taking two letters of the alphabet (one letter per editor for the big ones). Or even better - just start with five editors and the five shortest sections, and as each short section is finished, assign a new, larger one to the free editor. The general editor will be responsible for establishing the HTML spec for the entries -- the header, the formatting, etc. -- as well as the stylistic and scholarly requirements (which text to use, etc.). The editors will be responsible for recruiting contributors and gathering entries, and making sure that the entries match the HTML spec and the house style -- either by recruiting someone to handle such issues or managing them themselves (or only recruiting contributors who can manage it themselves). Each editor could recruit as many as 20 contributors -- mostly advanced grad students, I imagine, with those few faculty who would be willing to donate their time for something that might or might not look good on their CV, and the handful of "independent scholar"/well-informed nonscholars whose abilities with the Greek could be trusted. 3) Have deadlines. If you give someone a hard-and-fast deadline, you can be assured he or she will do plenty of work the three days before the entry is due. Then you can decide whether to extend the deadline or not, and thus get three more days of hard work. There are some heroic souls who can pace themselves with such a project, but most mortals find that the knowledge they will be hanged in the morning clears the mind. 4) Anyone who can learn how to send an e-mail message can learn HTML (I teach it nights as part of my Internet course; after 2 classes on the web in general and 2 on HTML, most can do at least simple markup). There's no reason that a specification sheet couldn't be written and authors asked to adhere to the spec -- if they're properly motivated. If you could find someone with a simple Greek font who'd be willing to donate it to the project, you could keep it on ftp on the web site and everyone would be able to read Greek in the HTML, too. Or you could standardize to GreekKeys or whatever and expect your readers to pay for it. 5) Copyright could be held by the individual translators (as with *Didaskalia* and most non-paying journals nowadays), with the agreement that any reprint must cite the SOL; copyright for the SOL as a work of compilation would be held by the general editor (and the individual section editors could copyright their sections as compilations if they really wanted to), with an agreement that the *editors* would split any proceeds from any eventual print publication of the translation. 6) The editors could keep Gregory Crane's Perseus Project in mind as an eventual consumer: the Suda might make a nice addition to Pausanias in the Perseus database. If the editors were willing to forgo any kind of compensation, I'm sure a half-decent translation of the Suda would be welcomed. ----- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 11:42:10 -0800 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: goya@uvic.ca (Michael Chase) Subject: Re: Suda >I applaud the enthusiasm of all who would like to see an English >translation of the Suda get under way. And most of those who would like >to see such a work are, for the most part, not unaware (as some few have >sketched for us already) of the massive labor a project of that sort >would entail. Even the "SOL" logo would underscore the sweat that such a >task would call forth.(Given so hidrotic an undertaking, doubtlessly the >myriad workshops-or offices-of selfless volunteers would become, >figuratively and literally, SUDAtoria. > > I recall this thread having been spun some years ago, at which time, >if memory serves me, Mike Chase described the proposed task as "Quixotic >or Borgesian," and indeed it may well be such. M.C.: Gosh, you remember my own posts better than I do. Assuming I did say that, let me qualify: a communal Suda-translation ought to be feasible, but it would need an editor of prodigious organizational skills, a la Richard Goulet of the Dictionnaire des anciens philosophes... Has the entire Suda been >translated yet into any other language? Isn't there a Latin version? M.C.: Aemilius Portus, editor of Proclus' _Platonic Theology_, published an ed. of the Suda at Geneva, 1630. Adler tells us he added "versionem Latinam vitiorum plenam". > > What we need is a deep-pocketed lover of literature to finance >translations of not only the Suda but of Stobaeus, Photius, Tzetzes, >Eustathius and other such fascinating Byzantine writers. I don't know of >any such patrons, but I am keeping my eyes open. M.C.: That's be nice. Of the above, Photius has been fairly well-served by the seven-volume edition by Henry in the Belles Lettres collection; the translation isn't perfect, but what is in this sublunar sphere? There is also an Italian translation of snippets of Photius' _Library_ (Milan: Adelphi 1992), which cliams it was carried out *a cura di* no less a personnage than Nigel Wilson. How much *cura* Professor Wilson gave to this project I would not care to speculate... I heartily agree that all this neglected sources need to be translated. But the trend seems to be *away* from supporting such projects. For instance: Richard Sorabji's splendid Ancient Commentators Project, based at King's College, London, is about to run out of funding after some 40 first-rate volumes of translations of Neoplatonic commentaries on Aristotle. So if you happen to find that elusive Maecenas, please let me know! Quick! >Of course, if the project actually gets under way, count me in. EJM M.C. Well sure, why not? Me too. Best, Mike. ----- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 15:55:25 -0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: Ross Scaife Subject: development of an e-suda A lot of what's being said on this list about creating a Suda On Line strikes me as surprisingly naive and ill-informed. It would be a real mistake to set about developing a collaborative e-suda as a mere collection of pdf or html files, for many reasons. Nearly all the least appealing work would just have to be done over again in the proper manner later, when the SOL's lack of utility became obvious to everyone; in the meantime, the messy uneven results would confirm everyone's worst fears about electronic publication. This project should start from the beginning as a web-enabled database with web-form-based entry of all materials. People who do such things could set up that internal framework in short order, and subsequent maintenance would be simpler by many orders of magnitude. This is also the best way to avoid the polyphony of word processing formats and most of the drudgery of tagging (since background scripts will add that automatically). It lets people with a good scholarly understanding of the content but little or no desire to learn about technical esoterica participate readily via their browsers, without a lot of support staff at the center of the operation. Above all, the data remains easily portable as technologies for manipulating and presenting it change. Ross Scaife ----- From: "Steven J. Willett" To: classics@u.washington.edu Date: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 12:42:14 +0900 Subject: Re: development of an e-suda Dear Ross, Good points all. I thought about discussing a database approach, but wanted to indicate some of the other editorial problems first. I am not completely convinced about taking the database approach, but have consulted with Terry Brogan about it--whom you may or may not know from the Princton encyclopedia of poetics and _English Versification: A Research Guide_ among others. He runs a web database company called Webmetrics. Acrobat format has much to recommend it, and is at his recommendation the route we're going with the electronic version of HVRG. Clearly, direction, discipline, organization and planning ought proceed a scamble to put up dirty, unchecked text. Thanks again. Steve ----- Date: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 11:41:26 +0000 (GMT) From: Don Fowler To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: development of an e-suda Can I just throw another possibility into the ring for any e-suda (without involving myself in what I think are difficult questions of quick and dirty vs slow and clean)? One of the world's great TEI fundamentalists, Lou Burnard, heads the Humanities Computing Unit here, and I know what he would say: encode the text as Text Encoding Initiative conformant SGML, and deliver it either directly as sgml / xml or converting on the fly to html. If you want to see what sort of things are being done with this approach, see: http://www.sil.org/sgml/sgml.html and specifically: http://www.sil.org/sgml/acadapps.html#tei Lou himself has a provocatish piece on the subject in the journal Computers and Texts from the Oxford CTI Centre for Textual Studies, called "SGML on the Web: Too Little Too Soon, or Too Much Too Late", issue 15, available at: http://info.ox.ac.uk/ctitext/publish/comtxt/ct15/burnard.html I'm not endorsing this approach (Lou always makes it sound a lot easier than it seems to me it is to go this route) but there is no doubt that the TEI route is a standard with a lot of support from groups like the MLA, as Ross Scaife pointed out. The University of Virginia has done a lot in this direction: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/xml is said to be the coming thing ... Don ----- Date: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 09:08:28 -0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: David Meadows Subject: Suda and sudor Very interesting to read all the reactions to the Suda stuff. At the outset I should say that I'd be more than willing to be the person who puts it into web format (i.e. the techie guy who does the drudge work and checking of claims every now and then [to say nothing of grammar]) since there's no way I could claim competence to be an editor of byzantine Greek. That said, here's some points in response to others (without specifying who said them... I'm now on the Digest and am debating whether it is better to have to wade through posts one isn't interested in to read the ones one is): 1. From what I've heard of Adler's text, there is no way that this could be done without *some* sort of rudimentary commentary or apparatus (at least) for each entry. For similar reasons it is necessary, I think, to have the Greek text on the site as well. And as was mentioned, as the tlg project shows, getting the text down is the first task. 2. This is the sort of thing which should be under the supervision of a general editor who knows the Suda extremely well, plus a number of others; personally I think it would be a wonderful pan-Classics collaborative effort if every school that offered a Ph.D. program (at least) had someone as a local rep who might be able to assign a particular entry to a graduate student to translate and then vet it prior to sending it to the general editor. It would be a very nice way for up and coming grad students to get a publication [of course, guidelines would have to be agreed upon] and would probably be more efficient than relying solely on the tenured or already-employed types who will probably be worried about whether such things can be put on their c.v.. 3. As for format: I think it is best to completely forget HTML (and SGML if anyone even considered that one)[except, of course, for the access to the website itself]. There are two realistic possibilities ... Adobe's .pdf format has been mentioned and it is a good one, primarily because Adobe has made a committment to ensuring that what you put in this format today can still be accessed 30 years down the road (it is used for archival purposes by a number of large corporations). I'm a big fan of this format (and am currently putting together an interactive first year latin course using it) and it does present a number of advantages for a project of this sort -- one advantage is that one actually sets the type for a pdf file in another program (e.g. your every day word processor or something else) so that can be an advantage -- if one wants, however, one can do proper typesetting in a program like pagemaker, and so if you want to come out with a 'print edition' later on (although why you'd want to incur the costs of a print run for something which hardly anyone will be able to purchase is beyond me), you have camera ready copy (or it's cousin) readily available. But if you're looking for another way to present things other than the web (obviously, CD is a consideration), again the pdf format is the way to go. [by the way, I do have all the necessary programs to do this right here right now ... pagemaker, acrobat exchange, acrobat capture (perhaps needed), and illustrator too if there's a need for that] The other possibility is to put the thing into a Folio database (such as has been done with latin inscriptions at Heidelberg); this is the program which (in Canada at least) is gaining momentum as the program of choice for distributing those shelves and shelves'worth of tomes you see in your lawyers office. Obviously the legal types are using it to have access to cases via CD Rom, but it is also obvious that it can be used via the web with great efficiency. 4. The 'everyone takes their favourite word' method on its own would be an utter failure. So would, I suspect, simply proceeding alphabetically a la the TLL (qed p?). It would probably be best (from a keeping enthusiasm up standpoint) to begin with a 'take your favourite'word approach for the first round (and give it a time limit ... say two months -- deadlines will obviously be a key for this thing to be up and running as soon as possible and successful), and then proceed from there. I also think it would be a good thing if individual entries were made available as soon as they passed by the editor rather than waiting for everything to be complete. At the website, of course, there should be a list of entries needing to be done and a form for folks to fill out who want to do such things -- the form would obviously be worded in such a way as to establish bona fides. 5. The entire project should be hyperlinked within itself (i.e. a reference to so and so in one entry should be able to take you to that so and so's entry) and searchable [again, pdf is ideal for this]. If there's an associated electronic publication (as I think there should be) there should be hyperlinks to that as well. 6. It would be nice if the APA or even FIEC lended some financial support to this sort of thing ... I'd certainly not take on a project of this sort without some sort of recompense. Even if they didn't, however, wouldn't it be a natural thing for there to be at least an APA panel (or panels) devoted to this? And even if that didn't happen, surely there should be some sort of official connection to give this an aura of 'legitimacy' ... if one of the big classical organizations were behind this, I suspect there'd be less skepticism about whether this is a legitimate publication which one can include on one's cv. At some point the classics community is going to have to bite the bullet and take the risk to force tenure committees (etc.) to accept electronic publication as a legitimate publication. 7. If we're going to do it, let's do it. Far too many things of this sort die on the order paper (as we say in Canada). Talk, talk, talk. That will get us exactly where we are now. Let's get an editorial board together. Let's get others (who aren't on the Classics list) on board. Let's find out the availability of the greek text and what sort of costs might be incurred (e.g. not every library has the suda ... a scholar we respect might want to do this particular entry ... are we going to send him or her a xerox of the entry or force him or her to find it on their own [in the latter case, I doubt there'd be much participation]. Let's work out other logistical matters [i.e. what's a reasonable time frame for the translation of an entry? what's a reasonable time for the general editor to have to peruse things? what's a reasonable time for the techie person to get the thing up and running? will there be one site in North America or will we also have mirror sites in Europe and/or australia? Let's take nominations for general editor! Let's start contacting folks about this! Let's come up with a 'call for contributors' that we can circulate on the appropriate lists (the gang at byzantine-l and late-antiq are obviously going to be interested)! dm ----- Date: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 13:55:18 +0100 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: Jenny Strauss Clay Subject: Re: Suda and sudor I have been following this discussion with interest. A formal proposal with request for sponsorship (but not necessary financial support) could be made to the Committee for Research of the APA. Jenny Strauss Clay Vice-President for Research ----- Date: Sun, 18 Jan 1998 06:16:10 -0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: David Meadows Subject: Suda and sgml At the risk of sounding like a stockholder in Adobe Systems, if SGML is the standard to be adopted (and a case can be made for it, although I still prefer pdf), let's at least use SGML as created by Adobe Framemaker which can do some formatting of the document rather than having it appear differently on everyone's individual screens -- this is a small point, but I think one of the things that is necessary for something to be taken seriously as a ascholarly work is that it appears the same on my screen as it does on someone half way around the world. I believe that using Framemaker+SGML would also be suitable for creating a print edition ... if you wanted to goto cd, however, it might be a different story ... dm ----- Date: Sun, 18 Jan 1998 22:49:24 +0000 (GMT) From: Don Fowler To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Suda and sgml I don't want to claim knowledge that I don't have, particularly when David Meadows successfully runs such an excellent site as Atrium so successfully, and I'm NOT an sgml fundamentalist, but I think what he says misses the point about using (TEI-confmormant) sgml. Any entity can be encoded in sgml, but the philosophy is very much one of encoding logical entities for preference: so a word would be marked up as rather than <24 point> or whatever. Then you can ask questions like "where does x occur in a lemma?" How it is displayed is a separate matter. Ideally, one should separate how the text is stored from how it is displayed (and how it is entered, possibly): you can then display it (e.g as html written on the fly) however you want, but other people can do other things with the basic text. My understanding is that marking-up a text in sgml using the TEI-Lite dtd is not too difficult, and that all the tools are available to then do whatever one wants to do with it (e.g displaying all lemmata in a particular format). But I haven't done anything practical in this line. Has anyone on this list had this experience? Is there anyone who has worked, e.g., with the Virginia people (see URL: http://www.sil.org/sgml/acadapps.html#uva)? The Oxford text Archive here I know has a lot of experience in this. Don ----- Date: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 22:56:26 -0800 From: "Patrick T. Rourke" To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Suda and sgml Prof. Fowler, David, & al., A few comments on the suggested formats: 1) SGML is very hard to read without an SGML-capable program. Sure, you could turn it into HTML on the fly: but now you're multiplying entities, having an SGML version and a derivative HTML version. I've also found that the TEI format isn't entirely compatible with certain programs: I tried reading one of the OTA texts in WP 8.0 and had to rewrite some of the definitions. This is a practical issue only; personally, I think OTA is going in the right direction, and it will take a few years for the rest of the world to catch up. It comes down to this: SGML isn't directly compatible with a web browser, and so needs an intermediary. That adds effort and an extra step to debug (because the SGML to HTML process isn't perfect). 2) PDF is great, I use it a lot myself -- when I know that the reader has Acrobat Reader or the Acrobat plugin. Problem: it isn't directly compatible with web browsers, but requires a plugin. Since my plugin came with a purchased copy of Acrobat Exchange, I don't know how easy it is or isn't to obtain the Acrobat plugin on the net, but you're now requiring the reader (i.e. consumer) to obtain something extra to read the text: and that's really not such a great idea (in other words, forget about my suggestion about Greek fonts in HTML), since you want to pitch the text to the technological lowest common denominator (let's face it, a lot of classicists know NOTHING about the net, and expecting the average reader of a Suda translation to find an Adobe plugin is a bit too much). Also, Adobe files are larger than HTML, causing two problems: disk space and bandwidth. Those of us who have a LAN or 128K ISDN connection might not be worried about the increased bandwidth of an Adobe file, but those who have 14.4 kbps and 486s (right now I'm at my mother's, working at 14.4 kbps and *386*) won't like you very much for wasting bandwidth. Also, any changes to the Acrobat file after it is created will involve re-distillation unless they are VERY simple (Exchange really isn't equipped for full-scale editing). Finally, searching Acrobat is a real pain in the neck. 3) Databases are great for searches; but they STINK for browsing. I can just about guarantee that the one common denominator on this list is that everyone on this list has, at some time in his or her life, *browsed* an encyclopedia or dictionary. With a database, there's really no functional way to do that. With full text files, on the other hand, you can write a CGI script to do the searches for you. Sure, it's brute force, and it's slower than a database: but this is a book we're talking about, not (please don't take any offense, Bill) a parts catalog. DON'T GET ALL CAUGHT UP IN THE TECHNOLOGY OF THE THING. Think of the web as an aid to collaboration, and as a cheap endrun around print publication, and forget about all the bells and whistles. Ross Scaife can say all he wants to about my naivete; but I'm looking out for the interests of the majority who DON'T have Pentium IIs and ISDN lines, and don't know a plugin from a helper program; and I'm also warning you that if you get too infatuated with the technology, you'll end up with lots of great ideas, but no book. I deal with this stuff every day, with PDF, SGML, HTML, MSWord & WP, Win95, Mac, and platform-independent markup, and with physical page layout; I've also been involved in the startup of four journals (three of which never made it into print), and I know what it is that kills new projects: as someone else on this list mentioned, the perfect is the enemy of the good. IT ISN'T THE MARKUP THAT'S IMPORTANT, IT'S THE TEXT AND THE DELIVERY OF THE TEXT TO THE WIDEST POSSIBLE AUDIENCE. If you are more concerned about presentation than anything else, go join THE SPOT. If you're interested in delivering the information that the Suda represents to the widest possible audience, use the markup that's the lowest common technological denominator. As long as the markup is upgradable, as long as you can go back later and add the commentary, get the translation done FIRST. When you have the translation, then the more powerful markups and the commentary will be useful. But a commentary on the Suda, of all things, isn't as important as making the data available: which means an electronic, easily accessible text and translation. Folks, this is a flame, I'll admit it: and you're welcome to say what you want about it: but if Homer had had this argument with his amanuenses, there'd be no Iliad. I can see the Homeridae arguing with him even now: "Perhaps, master, you should consider using stone tablets for recording the epic, rather than papyrus. It will take longer, and we will only be able to make one copy of the text; but it will set off the beauty of the song!" (That betrays my ideas about the composition of the epic, doesn't it?) If you choose the quickest, dirtiest, cheapest way to deliver the text to the masses, you've put that many fewerobstacles in the way of the realization of the text, and brought the text that much closer to existence. Once the text exists and is available, then you can worry about perfecting it: this isn't a finely-honed Knopf or Noonday volume of poetry that has to be sold to a paying public, it's a big, fat, vernacularly written (if it isn't a solecism to call the writing style of a Byzantine Greek *vernacular* ;-)! ) encyclopedia, and the commentary can wait, the beautiful page layout and typesetting can wait, the presentation can wait. Even if you do decide to use SGML, or a database, or Acrobat (in my order of preference after HTML), make up your minds and get started on the real work: someone volunteer to be the General Editor, and a few more people volunteer to do the translating. If I ever have time (and I won't), maybe I'll even help David with the grunt work. But get the argument over with and get started. The text's the thing. I honestly think that if you try anything more than a broadly-ranging, hierarchical editorial structure (I liked -- was it David's? --the idea of having SOL reps at graduate progams assign their students to do entries), a very simple, quick-and-dirty markup, and a translation with no more than the Loeb level of commentary, the project won't get done except on an ANRW timescale (apologies to Wolfgang Haase, who I'm sure can't be blamed for the deadline problems with THAT project). PTR ----- Date: Sun, 18 Jan 1998 23:47:51 -0400 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: Ross Scaife Subject: ok Nice flame, Patrick! So -- let me immediately withdraw my hasty crack about naivete, and offer apologies for it. No offense intended,to you or anyone else. All I meant to suggest, really, was that marking up this much stuff by hand could turn out to be unbearably tedious, and that the results might still need lots of further work down the road. A shortcut could probably be devised for the initial accumulation and subsequent manipulation of data that would save lots of trouble. I still imagine all that's likely to be true. But I'd like to see the experiment go forward as much as anyone else, so I'll shut up now. Good luck. -- Ross ----- Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 10:55:52 +0000 (GMT) From: John-Gabriel Bodard To: CLASSICS list Subject: Re: Suda In fact even conversion to HTML isn't _essential_ for the "quick and dirty" version - a lot of online texts and translations are in the first instance text-only documents. The beauty of the WWW is we can make "in progress" bits available more or less immediately, and update as we go along. I agree with those who have pointed out that if we do this NOW, and then start to worry about technical details, we're more likely to get off the ground in the first place. ----- Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 07:15:21 -0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: David Meadows Subject: Suda Some random points: 1. In regards to DF's arguments viz SGML: if we're going to be using SGML simply to get that particular effect, we are in the realm of overkill, aren't we? We're just trying to put a translation together, no? [P.S.thanks for the kind words viz the Atrium ... there's really nothing overly impressive (from a techie point of view) there though] 2. In regards to PR's comments on pdf -- Acrobat reader is stunningly easy to download and make available (a simple button at the website can do it). As for searching pdf documents, it is only a pain when those documents haven't been put together by someone who knows what they're doing (i.e. there's more to putting a pdf document together -- or rather, there should be -- than simply typing it up and running it through exchange; most pdf documents don't take advantage of (or even come close to taking advantage of) everything that the format is capable of)[p.s. for you art history types who'd like to deliver course content via the web but are concerned because images appear differently on different monitors: Adobe's pdf format compensates for this and makes images look as close to identical on every colour monitor as you're going to get]. There is an associated step called Adobe Catalog which speeds things up markedly. As for the size of pdf documents, they can (but, unfortunately, aren't always) be optimized (which usually means compression), which reduces their size immensely; they can also be set up in such a way that a user gets a page at a time in their browser window and while they are reading that page, the next page is downloading in the background. If this thing were to get off the ground we'd obviously not put the whole thing into one pdf file but rather make a pdf file of each entry ... [and by the way, there's no 'markup' involved in making a pdf file ... when you want to make hyperlinks to another section or document, it's a fairly simply process of pushing buttons and the like; if approached on an entry by entry basis (rather than trying to do them all at once) it won't/wouldn't be a big deal at all. dm ----- From: "Patrick Rourke" Subject: Re: ok Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 08:50:47 -0500 Ross, If you're suggesting figuring out a way to use a database framework to create the text, but make the text available in some kind of easy-to-read markup, then **I** withdraw some of my cracks. Best, Patrick ----- From: "Patrick Rourke" Subject: Suda/PDF Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 09:48:15 -0500 Yeah, David, Adobe Catalog and such would make it quite possible to do searches and add hyperlinks -- but you're still requiring the reader to either download the plugin (if that's possible), or download and install the reader, then download the texts. I honestly think that PDF is a great method for making texts available on the Internet -- if you know that your readers have a PDF-capable browser. I do, and you do, but how many others on this list, for instance, can read a PDF file without first downloading & installing Reader or the plugin? Yes, technically PDF is a graphics file rather than a markup - which is why even the compressed file is so large: I had to prepae a 500 page report with 200 figures in PDF, and the PDF file size, compressed, was 2/3ds the WordPerfect file size. As for tedious markup, with WP 8.0 and Word 97 (and the new Lotus word processing program, the name of which I forget), you can create an HTML file as easily as you can an Acrobat PDF file -- though I personally find hand markup more effective (you don't get the mess of vestigal codes you do with WP and Word). If you start out with a bare-bones markup, you can import the HTML or SGML file into WP 8.0 and then print to Adobe distiller, though you'd have to work out the DTD for an SGML file; and HTML and SGML files can be interconverted (another coinage, I'm sure; working with physicists is finally having an effect on my prose style) without much effort; if worst comes to worst, someone could write a simple search-and-replace macro. But if you print to Adobe distiller, you can't move backward to a markup -- you have to hold onto the source file in order to make substantial changes or to convert to a markup. I do agree with your promotion of Acrobat for graphics-laden textbooks, though. If you're teaching a class in art history, and can easily get your students to download & install the reader (or better yet, the plugin), Acrobat is great for incorporating text and image without worrying about any drift from browser to browser or platform to platform. I also like the idea of page breaks, myself: it makes reference easier, and as it's more akin to reading a book, it puts less strain on the reader. I think it's a great way to distribute a journal to subscribers. I just think that it might put a technological barrier between the readers of a translation of the Suda and the project that you, David, so aptly called SOL as insurmountable, for some (those with slow computers and little computer literacy), as the Greek language itself. I do think that plain text is TOO bare bones, though that might be the best way to have the translators submit their work. PTR, who wishes he could rewrite this into less tortured prose. ----- From: ctaylor@sworld.com (Carl L Taylor) Subject: Re: Suda/PDF Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 10:23:15 -0500 Patrick: I do not understand why you consider downloading and using Adobe Reader to be an obstacle. Adobe Reader is free, self-installing, and (in my opinion) easy to use. It starts automatically when a PDF file is opened. As for Word Perfect, which is not free, those of us who do not have it (I use Microsoft Word) will need to convert a WP file into some other format. Is conversion an error-free process now? Carl Taylor ----- From: "Patrick Rourke" Subject: Re: Suda/PDF Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 10:37:44 -0500 Carl, I'm not talking about using WP for the text, believe me. But you have to use a word processor to create a decent PDF file. I'm arguing against PDF precisely to AVOID the whole mess of holding onto Word/ WordPerfect source files, which would be necessary if any significant changes were to be made to the PDFs after they're posted. I PERSONALLY do not consider using Reader to be a problem; but I work with people who do find it annoying, because they just don't like the whole process of installing software. I know that of the classics professors at my undergraduate institution at the time I left, at least two were sufficiently computer literate to feel comfortable downloading a program and making an installation, and at least four weren't (those two are on this list, as a matter of fact). How would you work around the backwards engineering problem? If you wanted, later on, to create an SGML file, for instance, how would you do it without holding onto a WP or Word sourcefile and converting the sourcefile? Patrick Rourke ----- From: Tom Jenkins To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Suda/PDF On Mon, 19 Jan 1998, Carl L Taylor wrote: > Patrick: > > I do not understand why you consider downloading and using Adobe Reader to > be an obstacle. Adobe Reader is free, self-installing, and (in my opinion) > easy to use. It starts automatically when a PDF file is opened. As for I've used both .pdf files and HTML for the classics courses that I teach, and I must say that Acrobat, though really nifty, is a nightmare for the un-educated end user. Requiring the user to download _anything_ will make it unavailable to some 25%-30% of users, for whom the idea of a download is totally foreign. And others will inevitably have problems with installation, setting up the helper applications, etc. (I speak, sadly, from experience!) If this intriguing Suda project can be accomplished without the use of a plug-in (i.e. utilizing the resources of either Netscape or Internet Explorer), I think it will be beneficial in the long-run. An example of a good machine-readable text is at http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/nagy/PH.html (I think you might have to be an institutionally-subscribed member of Johns Hopkins press to gain access, though.) -Tom ----- From: "Sean Redmond" To: "Patrick T. Rourke" , classics@u.washington.edu Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 10:55:35 -0500 On 17 Jan 98 at 22:56, Patrick T. Rourke wrote: > Prof. Fowler, David, & al., > > A few comments on the suggested formats: > > 1) SGML is very hard to read without an SGML-capable program. Sure, you > could turn it into HTML on the fly: but now you're multiplying entities, > having an SGML version and a derivative HTML version. This isn't really multiplying entities, because HTML is a subset of SGML. You're talking about *degrading* SGML to HTML, which may sound like a bad thing but isn't. It's the proper thing to do, because it's a lot easier and less error-prone to go from a higher to lower standard than the other way around. > DON'T GET ALL CAUGHT UP IN THE TECHNOLOGY OF THE THING. Think of the web > .... > perfect is the enemy of the good. IT ISN'T THE MARKUP THAT'S IMPORTANT, > IT'S THE TEXT AND THE DELIVERY OF THE TEXT TO THE WIDEST POSSIBLE > AUDIENCE. If you are more concerned about presentation than anything > else, go join THE SPOT. If you're interested in delivering the > information that the Suda represents to the widest possible audience, use > the markup that's the lowest common technological denominator. As long > as the markup is upgradable, Everything is upgradable. Unfortunately upgrading usually means doing it pretty much all over again. Any automatic conversion (like SGML->HTML, SGML->plain text, SGML->Adobe PDF) can take out information that's already there, but nothing except a person at a keyboard can reliably but information in that's missing. The markup of an electronic text is it's medium, it's as important as the paper of a printed text. You wouldn't print something on cheap paper because most people don't know how to run a modern paper mill. People who don't care about SGML should never see the SGML, the should look at the HTML version, or the text version, or get the PostScript version and print it out. All of these conversions are possible if it's done right the first time. None of them are possible if a sub-standard standard is chosen at the outset. The perfect is the enemy of the good, but HTML isn't all that good. Not that SGML is all that perfect, but it is better. Sean Redmond ----- From: ctaylor@sworld.com (Carl L Taylor) Subject: Re: Suda/PDF Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 11:06:54 -0500 Patrick: I am speaking as a user of the files, not as a creator. Clearly the creator would need to keep the source file. As for the installation, it is so easy that I wonder if those who feel uncomfortable with something new like Adobe are going to feel comfortable creating SGML or HTML files. Carl ----- Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 18:10:03 +0200 (EET) From: Ivo Volt To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Suda Hello everybody, I must say that I have learnt a LOT about technical problems of creating a modern web page that would satisfy everyone (would it?), and I find that really useful. I wouldn't be surprised though, if anyone were typing the first letter of the lexicon at this very moment, or creating the first files to put on-line. Let's hope he/she won't be ready with it before the discussion ends :) Ivo Volt Assistant at the Chair of Classical Philology, Tartu University, Estonia ----- From: "Malcolm Heath" To: classics@u.washington.edu Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 16:44:59 GMT Subject: Electronic Suda A few thoughts. 1. The discussion of the technical details at this stage strikes me as premature. It will take a good while for a properly planned and funded project to get going (if it ever does), by which time the technical options will have changed. In any case, these issues can only be decided by an editorial team with a clear vision of what kind of product they are aiming to produce. 2. Having said that, I'll just add that if and when such a team gets to work,I hope they will take on board Patrick O'Rourke's comments, with which I entirely agree. What we need is something that can be accessed easily by everyone (who cares whether it looks the same on every monitor? I'm interested in what's in the Suda, not what it looks like). (Incidentally, even those who do know how to download and install software may depend for their network access on a central server over whose software setup they have no control whatsoever. So in this respect, too, the more the product is dependent on something other than lowest-common-denominator technology, the more likely it is to shut potential users out.) 3. If any coordinated interim work is done while a more formal project is being set up, obviously it would not be feasible to organise anything more than a simple format (which I would take to be HTML). 4. Anyone who thinks that a formal SOL project should be attempted ought to be encouraging that kind of interim work, since the editorial team will be able to learn a lot about the kind of issues they need to consider from the difficulties encountered by (and mistakes made in) such experiments. 5. By the issues they need to consider, I don't mean technical issues about mark-up and delivery, but issues concerning the translation itself - which have been strangely neglected in this discussion. Bill Thayer's contribution points us in the right direction (but the Suda poses problems of its own: for example, I'm not sure how the - obviously sensible - recommendation as early on as feasible, establish a common *consistent* glossary' would be managed in something as diverse in its contents and sources as the Suda). 6. A while ago I did have a go at translating some of the entries on sophists and rhetoricians (I may not have a TV, but I still know how to have a good time), and ran into real problems. Consider, for example, the bibliographies: titles including technical terms with no standard English equivalent, and technical terms with multiple meanings that can't be disambiguated in the absence of any other evidence for the contents of the book, plus the impossibility of establishing any consistent policy for determining what is a title and what is a generic description, etc etc. In short, doing the translation will raise lots of problems, most of which I suspect none of has yet foreseen. (If I can find the file with these experimental translations in, I will make it available; at the moment, it looks as if I must have deleted it in disgust.) 7. Arising out of that - instead of handing work out letter-by-letter, wouldn't a thematic approach be better? Many of the entries need someone with knowledge of the specialist area in question to be translated properly, or at any rate will be easiest for someone with such a knowledge. (Also, I suspect that an incomplete interim SOL will be more useful it has everything on the Suda on subject X than if it has everything that begings with letter Y.) 8. In which case, I would happily volunteer to have another go at the rhetoricians. (And I've been meaning to get to know the articles on grammarians, so I could move onto those in due course.) Malcolm Heath ----- From: "Sean Redmond" To: "Patrick Rourke" , classics@u.washington.edu Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 12:31:19 -0500 Subject: Re: Suda and sgml On 19 Jan 98 at 11:20, Patrick Rourke wrote: > Sean, > > 1) What lemmata would you be using in a prose translation that you > couldn't easily convert from HTML to SGML? Most of the page layout > formatting would be in the body codes and head codes, not in the actually > text. Moving from HTML to SGML wouldn't be all that hard, and it's a lot > easier to find a bunch of people who know HTML than it is to find a bunch > who know SGML. Yes, you would be multiplying entities, because the reader > on the web browser would be looking at a product of the SGML source, not > the source code itself, which means adding a step. How about something as simple as standard citation numbers? You can put in a lot of tags like but way invent a way to do something in HTML, then later convert it to SGML, when there exists a way to do it in SGML. Tags aren't only about looks. There's no tag in HTML that signifies a quote from another work. You can define one in SGML. Then if somebody wants to look for a Greek word that's QUOTED in the Suda, it's possible. There's no tag in HTML for giving the standard citation of a quote in another work. You can define one in HTML. So maybe in HTML you use for italics so the quoted texts are visually set off. There's no way in upgrading that to disambiguate all the various used of . Somebody has to sit down and say go laboriously over the text, saying "This is a quote, this is a title, this is for emphasis," and putting in unambiguous SGML tags. I think you would agree that if, five years ago, someone had suggested doing an e-Suda that might one day be available on the WWW, but since not very many people had heard of Netscape, why not just do it in plain text so people could get it by FTP and mark it up in HTML later, that person would seem very short sighted now. Five years ago HTML was a workable standard (as was SGML) and everybody learned very soon what Netscape was. Technology sometimes lacks behind standards, but that's not a good reason to compromise standards. > 2) The advance in readability between HTML and SGML wouldn't be apparent > in a browsable document, unless you plan on adding all sorts of bells and > whistles that would detract from the text anyway. SGML would make it > easier to upgrade the visual presentation of and search options for the > text, but believe me, a sufficiently professional document could be created > in HTML just as easily in SGML. It's not a matter of readability. Its's a matter of useability. SGML tagging would, for instance, make it easier to generate more accurate indices (in HTML) to accompany the HTML version of the text. That's not a bell or a whistle. That's something that somebody with Netscape 2.1 could use right away that couldn't be done as well with HTML alone. Who *reads* the Suda anyway? It's a lexicon, you look things up in it. A e-Suda that doesn't take advantage of all possible indexing and searching capabilities is not any more useful than a printed Suda, beyond the availability of an on-line text. The cost of doing it right the first time is MUCH less than doing it twice. > 3) If everything is upgradable, how do you upgrade a PDF file to SGML > without going backwards through the word processing source file? PDF looks > great and is a powerful format, but it's a cul-de-sac. That's my point. You can't, unless you redo it. But you could DE-grade SGML to RTF, look at that in Word or WordPerfect, and convert it to PDF. > My mild objection to SGML is that it would involve a larger number of > technically fluent people in the project than HTML would. This depends on the organization. A large number of contributors could contribute whatever format they like. A small number of editors can mark it up in a standard way. > But you're adding steps. The point to a managable project is to reduce > steps. Not every added step makes something unmanageable. Some added steps make a thing more useful. In this case SGML source texts will be easily converted to HTML texts, even ASCII texts for browsing, and will be much more useful down the road. Sean Redmond ----- From: "Patrick Rourke" Subject: Re: Suda and sgml Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 12:39:31 -0500 Sean, A lot of your points are very interesting. There are some little-used codes in HTML that can be used, easily, to indicate citations and defining occurrences, not to mention titles, but yes, there are codes in SGML that can't be upgraded to HTML without some point-by-point intervention. I don't know if they'd be necessary in a Suda e-text that's broken down one file per entry, though. As I said before, I for one WOULD read large swaths of the Suda, as I have of the OCD, for instance, & the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetics, & even (horror of horrors) the MLA handbook of bibliographic resources. I also read dictionaries, so maybe I'm an odd duck. I don't mistake them for verse, of course. Finally, you may not have noticed that all of your messages are being posted to the list twice. Thanks, PTR ----- Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 20:03:55 -0500 From: Anne Mahoney To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Suda I've held off on this thread, but I can't resist any longer. First of all, SOL is a good idea and we should do it. (I see a cautious consensus emerging here.) Next, I think there are advantages to SGML over HTML even though they are not necessarily apparent on today's Web. I will volunteer to be involved in the necessary programming to convert/downgrade/adapt from one standard to the other; programming is what I do IRL (i.e. when I'm not in the library :-)~~~~~~~~ ). This does not appear like the largest challenge here. I will also volunteer for the army of translating grunts, if that's the approach we end up with. --Anne Mahoney ----- Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 08:02:02 -0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: David Meadows Subject: Suda This has truly descended into the realm of the bizarre and yet it's incredibly familiar. May I suggest we don't pursue any projects having to do with online texts because we consider our audience too stupid to install a plugin? May I suggest that we simply reject a technology which was designed exactly for the purpose we want, which has flexibility that neight sgml, html, or anything else can match (e.g. if you want to distribute it in forms other than via the web later on)? May I suggest we reject doing *anything* new because we fear that some folks don't have a computer powerful enough to access it and on and on ["Oh dear, what about those folks still using Atari's and Commodore 64's"]? Why don't we reduce this to the utmost simplicity ... make a whole pile of email messages and put them on an autoresponder of some sort? Someone wants to know something, they send a request to a listserv and live happily ever after ... oh, heck ... you can't browse that way either. ... oh well, I guess, as with every good idea which seems to come up on this list, we've now managed to create that necessary atmosphere of negativity which will give our consciences solace when we don't do anything. No threat of bleeding on the cutting edge here ... dm (who now premptorily and perhaps even peremptorily withdraws from any of these 'why don't we do this' discussions until I see clear evidence that a project will actually be carried out ... meanwhile, I'll attend to my online Latin lessons, which do make use of the .pdf format and have a great deal of non-java interactivity because of it; I also think enough of my intended audience to believe that they can not only download, but install a plug in] ----- Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 08:45:43 -0500 (EST) From: Tom Jenkins To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Suda David Meadows opined: > this list, we've now managed to create that necessary atmosphere of > negativity which will give our consciences solace when we don't do > anything. No threat of bleeding on the cutting edge here ... What you see as 'negativity' I view as healthy debate. If this project is to take off (and spread its glorious lexigraphical wings), then it will pay off in the future to take a hard look at the technology _now_, as well as the capabilities of the intended users. > project will actually be carried out ... meanwhile, I'll attend to my > online Latin lessons, which do make use of the .pdf format and have a great > deal of non-java interactivity because of it; I also think enough of my > intended audience to believe that they can not only download, but install a > plug in] I think very highly of my students and my colleagues; and when they say that can't get Acrobat to install, or that it crashes, and or that it's hard to search with, I take their criticisms seriously. Plug-ins require work. If a networked university machine is not set up with the plug-in initially, then it requires a new download each'n'every time a user wishes to access the database. (That is how Harvard is set up now, since it reinstalls a 'clean' system after a user logs-out.) Plus, a plug-in means a user will have to keep up with the updates to the plug-in as well as to the browser. If a plug-in can be avoided, I think it should be! Inserting his $.02, Tom Jenkins ----- From: "Patrick Rourke" Subject: Re: Suda Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 08:53:38 -0500 David, Do you REALLY think this is the appropriate tone for this discussion? "If we can't follow my rules, I'm going home!!!" You haven't answered my biggest objection to PDF: how do you update it without retaining a non-PDF source file? Instead, you start of with "This has truly descended . . .," argument from emotion, not logic. How Republican of you! Seriously, David, I don't really want to get into a big argument with you over this; it's stupid to resort to emotional outbursts over a project which no one has volunteered to run, to which only one person has volunteered to contribute translations, and for which only two people (David and Anne) have volunteered to provide technical assistance. All of my objections were substantive: your answers should be, as well. Those who'd like to see one way that PDF has been effected on the Web might want to check out the US Internal Revenue Service website, http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/prod/forms_pubs/pubs.html This is a mediocre execution of PDF at best; I imagine David can do a lot better. To see a typical HTML site, try Didaskalia (I don't remember the URL of the top of my head, or have it here at work, but most of the classics websites have a link, and you can always go to AltaVista to check it out. Another site is the classics archive at MIT. I suspect (maybe Gregory Crane, if he's not wholly disgusted with this thread, can be more explicit) that Perseus represents an SGML to HTML downgrade like what Prof. Fowler, Ms. Mahoney, et al. have suggested; it is a very powerful site, as many of you know, but it does have something of a budget -- more work involved. If Prof. Heath does decide to post his translations, perhaps Anne, David and I could each post (to web pages) SGML to HTML (with the SGML source file), PDF (with the source file), and HTML (with the TXT source file) pages, and a few others could try accessing them. This won't be a fair test, of course, since the positives of SGML won't be well represented, and the negatives of PDF will be exacerbated in a small one-page site (though MOST of the positives will be on display), but it would give whoever DOES decide to take up the banner as General Editor a better sense of the capabilities of each. Now, could we PLEASE have a few volunteers to start translating, and a volunteer to coordinate, so we can leave this whole technical discussion behind, and I don't have to break my promise of yesterday yet again? PTR ----- Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 14:02:34 +0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: James Butrica Subject: Re: Suda I have Adler before me, open to the letter xi, a modest little entry of 13 pages, as I contemplate some of the problems involved (for example, it seems clear that lemmata will have to be presented in transliterated, not translated, form; but when a lemma and its definition are both in the dative case -- as with xanthoisin: orneois -- will that need to be indicated, and if so, how?). I am certainly willing to get started in earnest with a translation of this letter (while deferring to anyone who really wanted to do Xenophon, for example), but it seems only natural to want to be sure that the project has a future before wading into the X-Men. Or could a good-will specimen translation help with that in providing something that could be done up in a sample site somewhere? The discussion of formats is well beyond my technical capacity; but I follow instructions reasonably well. Xi-ing in hope that this project will prosper, JLB ----- Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 11:41:13 -0400 From: Debra Hamel To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Suda If what's needed for this project not to die untimely is that translators volunteer, I hereby make my willingness to contribute public. I'm sure there are many list members who are likewise willing/eager to take part, assuming that their contributions will in the end be acceptable to the SOL's future editors. (Remember that the idea of a disorderly jump to translating favorite passages was deemed undesirable.) Will anyone be keeping track of the offers of would-be translators when they come rolling in? Debra Hamel ----- Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 16:21:23 +0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: James Butrica Subject: Re: Suda: Technical and Volunteers Just to get the ball rolling, here's a quick and dirty version of the first page of xi in Adler's edition; odd Greek will be only one of many problems facing translators: "xan=E2n: the tiring of women's wrists through the continuous working of woo= l. xan=EAsei: [she] will grow weary. xanth=EAn: red-looking. [f. acc. s.] xanthizete: tinge, as with honey, or make brown by roasting. For the proper roasting of meats is so that they are brown. [plural imperative] xanthizesthai: to adorn one's hair. *xanthikos: the name of a month among the Macedonians. April. xanthion: re-stamped [or phps. chopping-block]. Xanthus: son of Candaules, a Lydian from Sardis, historian, born at the time of the siege of Sardis. Lydian History, four books. In the second of these he reports that Gyges, the king of the Lydians, was the first to eunuchize women so as to enjoy them in an ever-youthful state. This Xanthus reports that a certain Alcimus, a very reverent and most gentle man, ruled the land there, and that under him there was profound peace and much wealth, while everyone lived without fear and without guile; then, when Alcimus had ruled for seven years, the whole Lydian people came forth publicly and prayed and sought that such years be given to Alcimus for the good of the Lydians. And this happened, and they lived in much good fortune and prosperity. Xanthus: a river. xanthus though is "reddish." xanthoteros and xanthotatos. [i.e., "more reddish" and "very reddish"] xanthoisin: birds. xanion: a comb that women carry in the snoods in [for?] which there is gold jewelry upon their head." Note that even this little sample gives us the vox propria for the repetitive strain injury suffered by women who worked a lot of wool and the invention of the female eunuch (also reported by Athenaeus, in a slightly different form: I confess I'd like to have a few technical details of the process). Will it inspire? Will it deter? JLB ----- From: SIDER@murray.fordham.edu Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 14:01:05 -0500 To: classics@u.WASHINGTON.edu Subject: Re: Suda: Technical and Volunteers I've had to stop reading the postings on all-important technical matters, which are way beyond my ken, but let whoever is recording volunteers please add my name. David Sider sider@murray.fordham.edu ----- Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 17:21:43 +0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: James Butrica Subject: Re: Suda Another Suda-tease, noticed while browsing. The entry ho Karpathios ton lagOion -- under omicron, of course -- goes "They say that the Carpathians, who occupy an island, introduced the hare because they had none in their country. These proliferated and ruined their farms." Unfortunately, SOL (if it ever comes to be) will be too late to help the Australians. JLB ----- From: "Patrick Rourke" Subject: SOL Update: List of volunteers Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 15:03:51 -0500 Translation: E.J. Moncada (online 2 days ago) Michael Chase (online 2 days ago) Elizabeth Vandiver William Hutton David Sider JLP Butrica Debra Hamel Malcolm Heath (tentative) Technical: David Meadows (Adobe) Anne Mahoney (SGML) Patrick Rourke (tentative) There should be at least 15 volunteers, imho (humble, right), and more SGML volunteers (unless the editors decide not to go that route). I've heard offlist about a possible editorial team; and let's not forget the authoritative suggestion to request funding from the APA. If your name appears on this list, and you'd rather it didn't; if your name doesn't appear, and you wish it did; or if you're EJM, Bill Hutton, or Anne M. (because I don't have your e-mail addresses, or Bill Hutton or EJM's affiliation, handy and am keeping track of those as well for any eventual proposals), contact me at ptrourke@ziplink.net. If you're interested in doing the editorial work as well, let me know and I'll pass it along to other editorial volunteers. If I have time tomorrow, I'll post this list on a temporary web page until an editorial team and a home have been found for SOL. PTR ----- Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 15:41:46 -0500 (EST) To: classics@u.washington.edu From: William Hutton Subject: announcing e-suda test site It was most gratifying to come back from a weekend away to see the great interest generated by my harmless (I thought) suggestion for a collaborative e-Suda. Elizabeth Vandiver & I have put our heads together and agreed to offer ourselves as grant-seekers and general coordinators for the project. We do not mean to usurp this role from anyone who had designs on it him/herself -- please let us know if we're upsetting anyone's aspirations --, but as early contributors we both feel a responsibility toward ensuring that the current interest does not come to naught. To help us visualize the problems that lie ahead and possible solutions to those problems, I have put together a tentative web site incorporating a couple hypothetical entries. I hope interested list members will visit the site and make comments on it as a model of how to proceed in the future. The URL is: http://wehutt.people.wm.edu/contents.html I have entitled the site "Helios" (yes, I know it's taken) to distinguish it from DM's "SOL", which I agree should be the name of our final effort(even though it's in that other language). Here are the principles which informed my design of the site: 1. entries should be put into SGML form from the beginning, but contributors should submit their entries in plain ascii text. Ross Scaife's suggestion to implement forms-based submission to facilitate this should be followed up on as soon as possible. Copies of the entries should be kept both in SGML and plain text for future development (in the direction of .pdf files, etc.) 2. the user-interface should be as simple and gadget-free as possible, since not everyone has the latest Pentium and a trillion-baud modem. 3. To encourage maximum participation (hence, in my view, maximum chance of progress), anyone interested in contributing should be encouraged to do so. We should vet contributions, but not contributors. 4. In the system I have tentatively envisioned, contributions would be available on the site after a minimum of error-checking. Each entry would have an indication of its editorial status, from zero (minimally edited) to 3 (given a thorough going-over by experts). This would also be a caveat lector for the reliability and accuracy of each entry. Waiting for every entry to be made perfect before being posted to the site is a recipe for gridlock, IMHO. 5. Entries already on the site can be commented upon. Suggestions for the improvement of existing entries should be a high priority for whoever is in the editorial drivers' seat. 6. Notes and bibliography are good things, and I have modelled how they might be presented in my tentative web site. Our focus for the present, however, should be providing a translation of the text and only so much commentary as is necessary to help the reader understand murky spots and to warn him/her of egregious howlers. Each contributor can, of course, be as thorough in annotation as he or she chooses, but complete commentary and citations for every scholarly problem raised by the entry should not be a requirement at the outset. Once an entry is in place, more notes and references can always be added later either by the original contributor or by others. Again, these are just my suggestions (I haven't even run all of them by EV yet, so don't blame her for any idiocy). I certainly hope all those who have produced excellent comments on the project so far will check out the site and give us your opinion. If the response to my site is not overwhelmingly negative, I will proceed to post instructions on how contributors can provide other entries to be included on the site. Reaching the stage of adding more things by different hands will surely reveal more pitfalls that none of us has thought of yet. Bill ----- From: "Malcolm Heath" To: classics@u.washington.edu Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 10:24:15 GMT Subject: Suda I've now found my translations of entries on rhetoricians and sophists, and made them available at: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/classics/heath/sudabits.html ... only to find that events have overtaken me, in the form of Bill Hutton's admirable initiative. If he (or anyone else) wants to lift that file and incorporate it, please do. I should stress that, except for deleting the entries which were still full of gaps and question marks, I've posted these translations as they were originally done, in some haste and without thought of publication; so be gentle when you point out my errors and inadequacies. If the on-line Suda project really gets going, I will revise and annotate them, and fill in the gaps. Malcolm Heath ----- Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 10:44:39 +0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: James Butrica Subject: Re: Suda: Technical and Volunteers When I first did this very quickly, I didn't quite "get" the use of eita, which drove me to an unnatural translation of the phrase involving seven years. But after a few hours of the problem nagging at me, the solution came: eita does not indicate temporal succession within a single quotation but is rather a kind of shorthand for "and then, later in the same work, he also says that": in other words, it joins two separate quotation/paraphrases. So, for "without guile ... for seven years" read "without guile; and then later that, when Alcimus was seven years old, the whole Lydian people." The logical difficulty that bothered me now no longer exists. Xanthus twice mentioned the prosperity enjoyed under Alcimus. > >Xanthus: son of Candaules, a Lydian from Sardis, historian, born at the >time of the siege of Sardis. Lydian History, four books. In the second of >these he reports that Gyges, the king of the Lydians, was the first to >eunuchize women so as to enjoy them in an ever-youthful state. This Xanthus >reports that a certain Alcimus, a very reverent and most gentle man, ruled >the land there, and that under him there was profound peace and much >wealth, while everyone lived without fear and //without guile; then, when >Alcimus had ruled for seven years, the whole Lydian people //came forth >publicly and prayed and sought that such years be given to Alcimus for the >good of the Lydians. And this happened, and they lived in much good fortune >and prosperity. > JLB ----- Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 08:41:47 -0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: David Meadows Subject: It's Sudarific! Assorted comments on developments in the SOL project (which I was beginning to think should be referred to as the S.O.L. project): 1. I think Bill Hutton has come up with a reasonable way to proceed and if we're going to do this, it's worth doing his way (i.e. no, this isn't a case of 'take my marbles and go home' ... it's a case of getting tired of always hearing folks talk the talk but when it comes time to walk the walk it's a different story; I detect some tentative steps here ...). Heck, I'll even spend a while honing my meagre SGML skills if my services are requested. My only nitpicky suggestion about WH's test page would be to simply have the notes then bibliography and eschew an intervening hyperlink; it might also be useful to have a comments link/form for every entry ... this might be a good way to build up bibliographies as well (this might be there ... the short term memory isn't working yet). For TJ: If systems at Harvard require you to reinstall the plugin every time there's a new user, why not simply ask the techie guys to put a line of code in which loads acrobat reader as well? It's not as if this is an obscure programme. And the search capabilities of Acrobat reader are directly related to how much effort has gone into making the original pdf document. For PTR: What's the big deal about keeping the original source file? I'd do that no matter what method was ultimately chosen (and note that WH has suggested that as well). Even so, you can modify pdf documents with Exchange. In any event, if you want to see a nice side by side comparison of html v. pdf, go to: http://edfu.lis.uiuc.edu/review/ It's the Katherine Sharpe Review ... a journal for library science; in this case, the articles in the journal are available both in pdf and html format; it's a good site to point to to make the case for pdf for online journal publishing. (actually, if you go to the adobe site and work your way through the links, you'll find numerous examples of such things ... unfortunately the one I *wanted* to point folks to, because it involved a search engine (a site for working papers in economics somewhere in spain) has apparently moved. In any event, once I get through putting together my latin course, I'll alert the list to a demo page (to see the lessons will cost ya! 8^0) and perhaps folks will be rather less opposed to the powerful capabilities of the pdf format (although I doubt it) For PTR and WH (whose posts both touched on this): perhaps we should be considering both sgml and pdf at the same time? Do we not want to have the Greek text available? Since we're worried about folks not having the latest equipment, that pretty much assumes that they won't be using dynamic html (which would have to be rekeyed, as opposed to scanned, in any event), unless you want the greek text to simply be a gif image vel simm ... then again, I can envision constituencies which would prefer to have this on cdrom if they're going to be accessing it regularly ... For all and sundry (poor sundry ... he's always getting mentioned specifically): is there any word on a site to host this thing? dm ----- Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 11:45:59 +0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: James Butrica Subject: Re: Suda-Carpathius leporem EJM wrote: > I too can never read a reference to the Carpathian hare problem >without thinking of its modern counterpart in Australia. >Erasmus in his Adagia, II.i.81 has the adage "Carpathius leporem" which, >he says, is applied to those who introduced something which did them >harm. >His references include not only Suda, O 105, but Julis Pollux >(Onomasticon) 5.75, Zenobius 448 and Aristotle, Rhet., 3.11.14 EJM This observation points to another potential problem for the Sudatorii: how far will we be indicating sources or parallels of this kind? No doubt we will eventually want as much information of this kind as possible, and how fortunate that Adler includes an apparatus fontium, though in this case all she does is direct one to Gaisford's Paroemiographi Graeci. JLB ----- Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 15:37:20 +0100 From: "Dr. Joern Kobes" To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: It's Sudarific! David Meadows wrote: >...In any event, if you want to see a nice side by >side comparison of html v. pdf, go to: >http://edfu.lis.uiuc.edu/review/ > >It's the Katherine Sharpe Review ... a journal for >library science; in this case, the articles in the >journal are available both in pdf and html format ... All participiants are able to look for both *.pdf and *.html on the Home Page of the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, by Charles Crowther, who is Presenting both versions of his newsletter. Address: http://www.csad.ox.ac.uk/CSAD ----- From: John-Gabriel Bodard Reply-To: John-Gabriel Bodard To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: e-Suda (fao PTR, WEH, etc. re: contributors) I've been meaning to offer my help in some capacity to this project, but not quite sure *what* capacity - not as translator and my technical skills include neither SGML nor .pdf. However, in the meantime I want to forward an offer from Ian Rutherford here in Reading, who is willing to contribute translations. He is not subscribed, but please include him on the list (email: I.C.Rutherford@Reading.ac.uk). I trust the list will remain the primary forum for discussion of this project for the moment, so we can all offer our support and contributions of whatever nature as we go along. Cheers, Gabby. ----- Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 11:03:18 -0800 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: goya@uvic.ca (Michael Chase) Subject: Re: Suda-Carpathius leporem > >This observation points to another potential problem for the Sudatorii: how >far will we be indicating sources or parallels of this kind? No doubt we >will eventually want as much information of this kind as possible, and how >fortunate that Adler includes an apparatus fontium, though in this case all >she does is direct one to Gaisford's Paroemiographi Graeci. M.C.: Well, seems to me this should be *more or less* up to the individual contributors. Those of us who have a proclivity fro Quellenforschung should, I think, be able to stick in lots of parallels and explanatory footnotes. Those who find that kind of stuff boring can ignore it. The result will be heterogeneous; but more importantly it'll be democratic. The final result might resemble R. Goulet's _Dictionnaire des Philosophes Antiques_, which is largely put together by e-mail on a Mac, and desktop-published. I think it's quite important that we get capable editors in charge - Bill and Elizabeth sound fine to me, but it would be nice to get some Late-Greek /Byzantine lexicography specialists in there too; are you out there, Daniel Rianyo Rufilanchas? The editors should be the ones responsible for assigning who translates what. I think the only way this will work is if we so this by specialty: I work on philosophy, mythology, and to a lesser extent grammar, and so would be happy to take up some or all of the relevant S-entries. I can imagine that discussion of Suda-related questions might be pretty darned tedious to those Classics subscribers - however few they may be - whose cup of tea is not Byzantine lexicography. It would be a fairly simple matter (for those with more internet-know-how than I have, at any rate) to set up a SUDA-L listserv, devoted exclusively to SOL-related questions. This would free up Classics-L for occasional discussion of non-Suda-related matters. Just my $0.02 worth (= about $0.0000001 Canadian). Mike. ----- From: "Patrick Rourke" Subject: Suda On Line Volunteer List (SOLVL) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 16:05:35 -0500 The latest version of the SOL volunteer list. If you'd like your name added to the list, write me at ptrourke@ziplink.net Please use the subject heading SOLVL so my mail sorter can handle it. This list is dragged from a simple HTML page I'll be posting to my web site when my ftp server is back up; consequently there may be characters that some mail readers will have problems with. SOL Volunteers Editorial William Hutton, Coll. of William and Mary, USA wehutt@facstaff.wm.edu Elizabeth Vandiver, Northwestern U., USA e-vandiver@nwu.edu Translators: Michael Chase, Univ. of Victoria, Canada goya@uvic.ca James Lawerence Peter Butrica, Memorial U., Canada jbutrica@morgan.ucs.mun.ca Preference: xi Debra Hamel, Yale U., USA dhamel@aya.yale.edu Malcolm Heath, Univ. of Leeds, UK cla6mh@ARTS-01.NOVELL.LEEDS.AC.UK Preference: Rhetorica Sample at http://www.leeds.ac.uk/classics/heath/sudabits.html David Sider, Fordham U., USA sider@murray.fordham.edu Sarah Bolmarcich, Univ. of Virginia, USA mailto:smb8d@faraday.clas.virginia.edu Preference: psi Anne Mahoney, Boston U., USA mahoa@bu.edu Roger Travis, Univ. of Connecticut, USA travis@uconnvm.uconn.edu Ian Rutherford, Univ. of Reading, UK I.C.Rutherford@Reading.ac.uk John-Gabriel Bodard, Univ. of Reading, UK J.G.Bodard@Reading.ac.UK William Hutton, Coll. of William and Mary, USA wehutt@facstaff.wm.edu Elizabeth Vandiver, Northwestern U., USA e-vandiver@nwu.edu Technical/Editorial & cet.: David Meadows, Canada dmeadows@idirect.com Anne Mahoney, Boston U., USA mahoa@bu.edu Ross Scaife, Univ. of Kentucky, USA scaife@pop.uky.edu Patrick Rourke, USA ptrourke@ziplink.net Affiliations are listed to indicate the broad base of support for the SOL project, and refer to faculty, staff, and students. Some volunteers have not supplied their affiliations to the compiler of this list. ----- Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 17:25:39 -0500 (EST) To: classics@u.washington.edu From: William Hutton Subject: late breaking news on e-Suda Sudatores all, Ross Scaife has a computer science student at the University of Kentucky who is willing, if not eager, to make the tech side of S.O.L. his MA project. This would bring a couple of important benefits to the effort: 1. We would have a real computer programmer, doing work supervised by UK computer science faculty, working on the project with an extremely high incentive to making it successful. 2. S.O.L. would obtain a stable home at an excellent computer facility Ross has also had extensive discussions with Gregory Crane about coordinating S.O.L. with the lexicographical efforts currently underway at Perseus. There are a number of interesting possibilities in that direction. I for one see no compelling reason why we shouldn't grasp this opportunity. If any of you disagree, please speak now. It would mean that the text encoding would proceed along the sgml route as Ross (and others) initially envisioned it, but no one has offered any objections to that for a couple of days. It may also be a let-down for those of you who kindly expressed a willingness to work on the tech problems, but I sincerely hope that you will stick with the project: we will still need advisors who are tech-literate to mediate between the computer-challenged classicists and the classics-challenged programmer. We now have to think seriously about how we are going to organize the various sorts of work that people will be doing on the project, I topic for which I solicit advice from everyone. Bill ----- From: Anne Mahoney To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: late breaking news on e-Suda William Hutton wrote: > > Sudatores all, > > Ross Scaife has a computer science student at the University of Kentucky > who is willing, if not eager, to make the tech side of S.O.L. his MA > project. Wonderful! He (and we) should go for it. Couple of points: -- If SOL gets based at UK during this student's tenure, can it stay there after he finishes up and leaves? -- Further to SGML and HTML and PDF: Surely we can have it both ways. SGML is about content, not about display. I'd envisioned writing something that would convert from SGML to HTML (that's straightforward, everybody and his cat does that), but one could also convert from SGML to PDF given suitable info about the format of a PDF file. If it were up to me, I'd convert the files up front, not "on the fly" as e.g. the Virginia site does (because that's likely to be easier and certain to be faster, but eats disk space). We could then offer users a *choice*: click here for the HTML version, here for the PDF version (and here to download the plugin). DM is right about the desirability of a slick display. One thing I've learned in all my years as a professional programmer is to partition problems: here, how translators create text, how it gets stored, and how it gets displayed can and should be treated as independent. -- What exactly does "willing, if not eager" mean? Can anyone estimate the probability that the student will finish the task? It's a real question, at least in an industry context -- programmers do get better offers and move on. ("How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb? Two - one always leaves in the middle of the project.") It's affected *my* life more than once, so I think it's a question that should be raised. I'm also willing to provide a non-academic software engineering perspective if that's useful. OF COURSE I'll "stick with the project." --Anne Mahoney ----- Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 20:32:47 -0400 From: Debra Hamel To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Suda On Line Volunteer List (SOLVL) Perhaps this has already been made clear and I missed the clarification, but having just translated one small passage from the Suda (*strateia en tois eponymois*) I ask now whether there is agreement about how translating responsibilities should be parcelled out. Ought we in these first fires of enthusiasm begin translating what we want and inform Patrick Rourke of what we've laid claim to? Should we stick to a block of contiguous entries or translate entries that are related thematically? Debra Hamel ----- From: "Patrick T. Rourke" To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Suda On Line Volunteer List (SOLVL) Don't ask me, I'm just the piano player. No, seriously, I'll start keeping track of everyone's preferences (as best I can; I'm sure there are names missing and preferences missing or wrong). The SOLVL web page is now up at http://www.ziplink.net/~ptrourke/sol.html and I'll be adding links to samples as those become available (no critiques of the page, please; it's just what I threw together during short breaks at work, hand-encoded with NO graphics whatsoever). Please let me know about any inaccuracies so that I can correct them: the procedure is to e-mail me at ptrourke@ziplink.net and include the letters SOLVL in your subject line, and I'll do my best to keep up. Eventually whoever lays claim to the laurels (I'm assuming that WEH & EV will be running the show, since no one has stepped forward to challenge them) will be able to use the page as they see fit, and make assignments as they see fit (in case your wondering, no, I am not volunteering to translate: even the fairly gentle Suda is something I wouldn't tackle without a nice 6th-former commentary. ON the Volunteer list, I've included three categories for now: Editorial (WEH & EV are the only volunteers so far), by which I mean the folks who will be making final editorial decisions; translators, which should be obvious; and technical/editorial, which is everyone else (yes, I noticed the redundancy; polypragmosyne is also the enemy of the good). TECHNICAL STUFF About SGML to PDF: the usual method of "encoding" PDF is to run an existing word processing file through a distiller; PDF is actually a graphics file (which is why it's so platform-independent), not a text file. WP 8.0 allows SGML, HTML, and PDF (with Acrobat Exchange), and also has a much easier interface to use than MS Word, so it may be helpful when it comes time to create PDF files. The SGML to HTML obvious would be a simple script, Ross has obviously come out of his meeting with good luck and a programmer to create an online data entry and search engine, now the only **technical** challenges are: 1) as I've said, it would be most useful to use a markup that would be easily convertable to the Perseus markup, so RS, EV, and WEH should keep the lines open to Gregory Crane 2) another useful markup to stay in touch with would be TEI-standard SGML, as used by the Oxford Text Archive (no, Prof. Fowler, your pleas did not fall on deaf ears), if someone were only more adept at adapting the TEI DTD to applications than I am (that would be you, Anne). If there's a markup that would be easily convertable to either (obviously some flavor of SGML), that would be ideal. COORDINATION Eventually, whoever ends up as the General Editors will have to make a decision about how to proceed organizationally. If you get funding from APA and other sources, you might want to hire someone local (a grad student who, like Anne Mahoney, or like a graduate of the Tufts technology/classics program, knows both classics and technical issues -- that would be your best bet), at whatever rate and hours you can afford under your funding, to handle all the administrative stuff -- I've got something like 60 messages here, and since I'm working three jobs, a lot of people haven't heard back from me yet (sorry, Ross & Joe). You'll need someone to do this long term and at least 15 - 20 h a week :-|. This project is already spinning out of control: either we all backpedal to HTML, with everyone doing their favorites, or someone has to do it full-hilt. I know there were other things I wanted to say, but I'm too tired. Adieu. PTR ----- Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 06:31:51 -0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: David Meadows Subject: late breaking news on the Suda Excellent news, Bill, even if it does take folks like me essentially out of the picture tech-wise. Perhaps the way to proceed now would be to have one or two (or more) assistant editors who would preview translations for English stuff (unintentional (of course) misssspellings, ambiguities of english translations etc) who would preview things and let the editors concentrate on the accuracy of the translations itself? dm ----- Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 07:29:07 -0500 (EST) To: classics@u.washington.edu From: William Hutton Subject: Re: late breaking news on the Suda At 06:31 AM 1/22/98 -0500, you wrote: >Excellent news, Bill, even if it does take folks like me essentially out of >the picture tech-wise. God, I hope not. Seems to me we need people like you -- people who are conversant with both the latest tech possibilities and with what classicists really want out of such a project -- as much as we did before. Letting a non-classicist programmer in on the game solves a lot of problems, but it raises as few as well. Gotta run; more later Bill ----- From: "Roger Travis" To: classics@u.washington.edu Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 09:29:44 +0000 Unless anyone else has already done so, I'm going to start in on Khi (ulterior motive: khoros). If other volunteers are interested in anything in X (including various khor- derivatives, which I'm willing to split [or give up entirely if someone with more experience than I shows an interest]), let me know! Roger Travis ----- Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 09:55:34 -0500 (EST) To: classics@u.washington.edu From: James Baron Subject: Re: SOL translating We are really getting Suda-fed lately, aren't we! Jim Baron ----- Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 11:29:23 -0400 From: Debra Hamel To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Translation Suggestion I propose that translators inform Patrick Rourke of the specific passages of the Suda they either have translated or will certainly translate (identifying them by letter and number). That way one up-to-date master list of all entries spoken for will be available to prevent translators from duplicating work. Obviously there isn't a big problem in the case of those who have elected to translate complete letters, but a more scattered approach as that I seem to have adopted may readily lead to complications. (I recognize that there are organizational difficulties inherent in the scattered approach--just the sort of confusion about what's been translated that I refer to above. But the small amount of translating I've already done has suggested to me that there is some benefit in working on entries with whose subject one is pretty familiar.) So, Patrick, my own entries to date are: S1165, S1169, K 1618-1620. Debra Hamel ----- From: "Patrick Rourke" Subject: Re: Translation Suggestion Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 11:41:00 -0500 I'm very busy today, so only a quick suggestion: I'll add a list Alpha to Omega to my page, with numbers for each letter & translator's initials, and if I have time, hyperlinks to anything posted online. Later on the entries can be dovetailed into Bill Hutton's site. PTR ----- Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 11:52:30 -0400 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: Ross Scaife Subject: Re: late breaking news on the Suda Cc: dasmith@perseus.tufts.edu, gcrane@perseus.tufts.edu, Raphael Finkel Just to amplify Bill Hutton's message of yesterday afternoon to this list a little: I can work with a Computer Science graduate student programmer here at UK and his faculty adviser this spring and summer. I hope we can establish the sgml-tagged English translation of the Suda in a useful structure that allows (for example) searching, display of subsequent headwords for browsing, internal cross-linking of the Suda's headwords, and also links to LSJ and whatever other tools in Perseus and elsewhere as seem appropriate. There will be consultation with Perseids to that end. Contributors should be able to submit materials via web forms with fields for their translation, bibliography, annotations, related URLs. Possibly at least some editorial revision can also be done on line. This design is of course subject to change based on technical developments, later inspirations, users' suggestions, and reality checks. While I hope we can be responsive to many expressed concerns about the interface, ultimately the CS student programmer will answer only to his MA project advisers here. The materials generated will _probably_ continue to be supported in the new Center for Humanities Computing we want to establish in the new library set to open here at UK in April. I cannot _promise_ that long-term maintenance, but it's what I hope will happen. If not surely we can provide for continuing availability of this material in some other way. Beyond working with the programmer and his adviser I am not taking on any other sort of editorial or organizational responsibility in connection with this project. Let the collaborators collaborate! There is a separate list now, to ease this venerable Classics list: to subscribe send the message 'subscribe suda [yourname]' to listserv@lsv.uky.edu with a blank subject line. best wishes, Ross ----- Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 11:02:40 -0800 From: "Karl F. Best" To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Suda and SGML/PDF I'm a bit late joining this thread, but I hope that I can offer a bit of advice. I'm only an amateur classicist (heck, I have no idea what the Suda is!) but have worked professionally with SGML and electronic delivery of text for a number of years. I've read with interest the comments on the subject by Patrick Rourke, David Meadows, Sean Redmond and other the past few days, and agree mostly with David and Sean, though Patrick also raises some good points. May I suggest the following: Something no-one yet has brought up is that there are two parts to this: 1) the format the text is stored in and 2) the format used for delivery. May I suggest that it is not required (nor even preferrable) that these be the same. The format used for long-term text storage MUST BE AS USEFUL AS POSSIBLE. I cannot emphasize this enough. If your text format for long-term storage is a "dumb" format such as HTML or PDF then you'll have to do it again later. I call these "dumb" formats because the text stored in these formats know nothing about themselves. As Sean (I think) pointed out, you can mark up a chunk of text in HTML to say that it should be displayed as italic, but what does that italic mean? If you mark up the text in SGML using the TEI DTD, for example, then you can specify exactly what each piece of the text is, what it means, how it used, etc. This makes the data intelligent. Intelligent data means that the data can be reused: it can be searched, sorted, and output in any way that you want. The next step is delivery. Once you have intelligent data it's pretty easy to get any sort of output from it that you'd like. Getting HTML from SGML is a piece of cake. Getting PDF is pretty easy too (just run it through FrameMaker+SGML, my platform of choice), as is print. Once you've got an intelligent source file you can do anything you want with it. But if your source is dumb then you're pretty restricted in what you can do with it from there. Dumbing down data is easy, but adding intelligence requires starting over. As for the delivery formnat, HTML is currently more accessible to a larger number of users on the web, while PDF requires setting up plug-ins (pretty easy but still an additional step). But HTML formatting is pretty limited right now until CSS becomes more implemented, while PDF gives you exact page representation. Of course once XML becomes more available in a year or so then that would would be a better solution than HTML. My suggestion? Get to work on your translation, mark-up your files in SGML using TEI or TEI-lite, then in a year or so when you're ready to deliver you can decide what's best. If you've marked up your text in an intelligent manner then your delivery options are wide open. ----- Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 10:50:59 -0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: David Meadows Subject: final (or so) thoughts on the Suda To Bill et al: please don't misconstrue my last note on this subject as indicating not wanting to participate; if you find a place for me, I'll be happy to take part. Outside of that, here's a couple of concerns: 1. On using Adler's text (this might have been hinted at before) -- as was mentioned, Adler does make note of the sources of the passage; in many cases, it seems, the sources still exist and the text that survives is superior to that which is found in Adler's collation of the Suda (was there a collation?). Should translators make an effort to track such things down? 2. In regards to the computer science student who will be doing the dirty work: someone should get something *in writing* that the project is under the auspices of some sort of official group and as such, the result of it belongs to that group, not the computer science student. I'm not prejudging anyone here but it seems to me that if so many people are going to be putting the effort in to translate things, it would be a great shame if the student, at the end of the project (or even half way through ... what if he/she decides to quit) takes it all and claims it as his/her own (or the comp sci department decides it is their intellectual property). Getting releases from the translators would probably be a good idea as well. I know all this sort of thing might seem unnecessary right now as we bask in the warm huggy kissy glow of excitement at the new project, but things might not be so rosy six months down the road. The first rule of anything on this scale is to cover one's derierre. dm ----- From: "Patrick Rourke" Subject: Suda Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 12:31:22 -0500 There is an updated version of the Suda volunteer list on my web site at http://www.ziplink.net/~ptrourke/sol.html Note that the page is still a work in progress (as for the logo, that's one of the logos I use in my HTML class and doesn't have anything to do with SOL; but I needed some "white" space); the end of the alphabet is particularly contorted; names mostly appear in the order that each person volunteered. Any corrections or suggestions can be forwarded to me at the address below: please include the letters SOLVL in the subject line. Likewise, any new volunteers should contact me at that address with that subject line. As for the format, clearly alpha to omega is better than A to Z. As for everything else, ? ----- Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 14:38:18 -0500 (EST) To: suda@lsv.uky.edu, classics@u.washington.edu From: William Hutton Subject: woops Sorry, I forgot to append this to my last message. Subscribe today! > >There is a separate list >now, to ease this venerable Classics list: to subscribe send the message >'subscribe suda [yourname]' to listserv@lsv.uky.edu with a blank subject >line. > ----- Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 15:24:51 -0500 (EST) To: classics@u.washington.edu From: William Hutton Subject: Suda: the next step Become a member of the Suda mailing list! instructions at the end of this message. Sudatores: One thing that amazes me about this project is how far it has progressed with no real hierarchy or decision-making structure. So far all of our individual initiatives have meshed together well. I'm not so optimistic about how long we can keep this up, though. I think it's about time we made things a bit more formal. I suggest we form a managing committee to take responsibility for the continuing progress of the project. Membership need not be exclusive, but should perhaps be limited in number (7? 9? 11?) to avoid total chaos. Decisions perhaps by simple majority vote with >50% constituting a quorum (vel sim.). Broadest possible consultation with the entire Suda-community should precede major decisions, of course. Details could be worked outonce we had at least a partial board of members and a chair. Unless there are any objections I volunteer my own services for this committee and ask for other volunteers and nominations. For purposes of further organization of the committee I nominate Elizabeth Vandiver to serve as chair. Of the participants in the project that I know personally, she is the most Solonic. ----- Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 15:46:49 -0500 (EST) To: suda@lsv.uky.edu, classics@u.washington.edu From: William Hutton Subject: Suda: problems to consider Be a member of the Suda mailing list! Instructions follow this message: I'd like to try to scare up a few more opinions on the following matter: A. There seem to be four basic ideas on how we should tackle the translating job: 1. Concentrate on one letter at a time 2. Concentrate on subjects; e.g. Philosophical, Historical, Archaeological, Topographic. Solicit translators and proofers with expertise in those fields. 3. Let people translate whatever they want. 4. A combination of two or more of the above (3) has prevailed up to now, and while this method has obvious advantages in keeping translators cheerful and productive, some have expressed the fear that it will lead to self-defeating chaos. My own sense is that we ought to settle on some more orderly approach, but I don't want to discourage those who have already started contributing. Is it feasible to institute a purposeful regimen of (1) or (2) while keeping the freelance option open? ----- Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 14:41:59 +0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: James Butrica Subject: Re: Suda: problems to consider The obvious problem with 3 is that the project will inevitably reach a point where somebody or other is going to have to be prodded into translating the left-overs that nobody wanted to do, and if nobody can be prodded, the project can't be finished. The problem with 2 is, I think, that devising the categories (how many? How specific?) and sorting the thousands of entries into those categories are both daunting tasks. The problem with 4 is the problems with 2 and 3. Only with 1 do I not see an obvious technical problem, apart from persuading people to translate more than the dozen or two entries that interest them directly; perhaps one viable approach -- if a decree is not to go out that it must be done letter by letter -- might be to encourage those doing selected entries to do a certain number of surrounding entries as well. But surely the most practical way to handle the job is to break the Suda down into continuous chunks, like a manuscript broken up into its gatherings so that several monks could copy it simultaneously, then assign those chunks (individual translators can handle the short letters like xi and psi [I wanted to volunteer for psi too but someone beat me to it], long ones can be broken down into convenient units. Just my twonie (at current exchange rates) JLB ----- Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 15:32:35 -0600 To: classics@u.washington.edu, suda@lsv.uky.edu From: Elizabeth Vandiver Subject: Suda On Line: Editorial Committee Sudatores, Apparently, since no-one objected to Bill Hutton's suggestion (at least not publicly!), I'm the Chair pro temp. of the Managing Committee. In that capacity, I would like to announce that Peter Green has agreed to serve on an Editorial Committee, whose duties have yet to be delineated but will surely include at least some review of entries. We need others to serve on this Committee and on the Managing Committee--please send me any suggestions or nominations (of self or others). Thanks! EV At this point discussion of the project on the classics-l list began to peter out, but continued on the newly created suda-l list, and then via personal communication and restricted listservs among the editors and contributors. 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