From: CBS%UK.AC.RUTHERFORD.MAIL::CA.UTORONTO.UTCS.VM::POSTMSTR 14-JAN-1989 09:16:48.51 To: archive CC: Subj: Via: UK.AC.RUTHERFORD.MAIL; Sat, 14 Jan 89 9:16 GMT Received: from UKACRL by UK.AC.RL.IB (Mailer X1.25) with BSMTP id 9242; Sat, 14 Jan 89 09:15:24 GM Received: from vm.utcs.utoronto.ca by UKACRL.BITNET (Mailer X1.25) with BSMTP id 1845; Sat, 14 Jan 89 09:15:22 G Received: by UTORONTO (Mailer X1.25) id 0351; Fri, 13 Jan 89 14:43:15 EST Date: Fri, 13 Jan 89 14:43:06 EST From: "Steve Younker (Postmaster)" To: archive@UK.AC.OXFORD.VAX ========================================================================= Date: 1 June 1987, 14:13:58 EDT Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Two recently promulgated errors: (1) I was given the wrong information about fetching a list of resident files from the UTORONTO node. I will let you know when the proper syntax has been determined, and I'll then be able to give you some idea of how much we can afford to store centrally. (2) A bad address for a colleague on MLNET has caused a rash of irrelevant chatter, for which I apologize. The problem is being investigated, but since other messages get through to him at the same address, it's difficult to know what's responsible. Yours, W.M. ========================================================================= Date: 1 June 1987, 14:35:53 EDT Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Received: from watdaisy.uucp by water; Mon, 1 Jun 87 08:43:16 EDT Received: by watdaisy; Mon, 1 Jun 87 08:43:12 EDT Date: Mon, 1 Jun 87 08:43:12 EDT From: Frank Wm Tompa Message-Id: <8706011243.AA20128@watdaisy.uucp> To: MCCARTY@utorepas.bitnet Subject: electronic publication Because HUMANIST is non-refereed, I would think that it falls in a completely different category than a refereed journal. I believe that an author could honestly claim that circulation in HUMANIST is similar to circulation of a technical report -- regardless of its quality, it is not perceived as a publication (wrt brownie points). On the other hand, such circulation does not in any way infringe on journal publication of the same document. I would claim that, in CS at least, there would be no conflict nor any perceived conflict. P.S. Were there to be a conflict, I as an author, would definitely choose a refereed journal if I thought the paper was of sufficient quality. ========================================================================= Date: 2 June 1987, 21:45:04 EDT Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS A contribution from Jeff Gillette, whom many of you must know, at least by reputation (as author of the Duke University Toolkit, that is): ==================================================================== Received: by TUCCVM (Mailer X1.24) id 6058; Sun, 31 May 87 21:08:47 EDT Date: Sun, 31 May 87 20:48:10 EDT From: Jeffrey William Gillette Subject: Re: Electronic publishing To: Willard McCarty Regarding the subject of electronic vs. printed journal publishing, Perhaps I might throw my own 2 cents into the discussion. Let me start with two observations: a) many major journals in the computer trade press sponsor electronic discussions on various systems (e.g. Byte and Bix, Dr. Dobbs and Compuserve). These magazines have increasingly featured a "best of..." section in their printed issues. b) Many of the major professional journals (MLJ, Foreign Languae Annals, etc.) are featuring columns on computer applications and research. Generally these are written by a continuing scholar who has earned a reputation for being "computer wise." Would there be any advantage in contacting one or several professional journals who have editorial members involved in ACH, your Humanist project, or some subset of the two, inviting them to publish the "best of the Humanist discussion" - that is applicable to the appropriate discipline(s). It seems to me that the short question/answer/comment format of, e.g. Byte, would not be entirely appropriate. Perhaps, however, several "mini-columns" or longer discussions that take place each month would prove useful to the larger audience of the traditional journals. The first objection I see to this type of arrangement would be the problem of credit - does the university consider the regular computer column of Dan Brink or Bob Kraft in their particular discipline journals as valid a con- tribution to the academy as their more traditional contributions. Could some type of peer review of such columns be set up by which tenure commitees could be satisfied that this publication was indeed a valid contribution to the discipline? In the case of a school like Duke I have serious doubts. Perhaps other faculty are more enlightened. I know this suggestion is unpolished, but I guess it is as useful as any, given the ofttimes languid pace with which electronic media are being integrated into many of our disciplines. Peace, Jeff ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 3 Jun 87 16:18:25 GMT Reply-To: CMI011%UK.AC.SOUTHAMPTON.IBM@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: CMI011%UK.AC.SOUTHAMPTON.IBM@AC.UK Heres my thoughts on the 'how to run Humanist' debate, which is of general interest beyond Humanist, I think (the debate, not my thoughts!). I think Willard's introductory note to new readers adequately defines what is and is not proper material for the list, so that leaves three problems: a) should the distribution be a weekly digest? at present, Toronto just forwards incoming material as soon as it arrives. This means that most days one gets a Humanist or two, each of which may add to a debate. This is all very fine in theory, but in practice I find it confusing as I get flustered by the size of my mailbox. I would much prefer it if all messages were collecte d for a week and then mailed on to us in a batch, so that, say, every Monday morning one got a huge mail full of peoples thoughts. As it is, I wonder who else is behaving like me - I waited for a few days, then printed out all the Humanist stuff and am now replying. b) mail vs. filestore. I would say that no contribution should normally exceed 150 lines, and that most should fit on a single screen or two. It simply is not possible to comfortably read the text on a VDU for most of us (I exclude the SUN owners, lucky dogs). I would go so far as to suggest that a Humanist editor (presumably Willard - sorry!) be asked to look at messages and put those over 150 lines into a file server system. c) "publication" - is this a real issue? anything as long as an article that is going to give any brownie points in ones institution isnt appropriate for electronic distribution in the present state of the technology, unless we start agreeing standards (Interleaf files? TeX? raw PostScript) its just not on to present a complex document on the screen across n continents. Ergo, only paper publication will do, so the Humanist version isnt the 'real' version, so editors should not be upset. . . However, as is common practice anyway, sending out drafts for comment is normal practice, so why not do it via Humanist? For myself, I intend to use Humanist for a) gossip cum question and answer b) sending out stuff that I would otherwise send xeroxes of c) giving synopses of work which is being fully published elsewhere. Flame off, as they say. lets get into the adverts - does anyone over in North America want to go and buy "Information Technology in the Humanities", ed. S. Rahtz, Halsted Press (John Wiley) 1987? It consists of 14 chapters by English academics about the problems of introducing computing into humanities curricula, both general issues (whether to learn programming, whether word-processing is academic etc) and discussions of particular subjects (the more unusual ones - Archaeology, Music, Classics etc - are present, while the much-written-about Computer Assisted Language Learning is not). Its about teaching ABOUT computing, not teaching WITH it. Does anyone else teach Prolog? Leslie Burkholder's ideas were welcome, and I would be curious to hear others. my students dont get any further than a dating agency - I wish I could get them as far as foxes, geese and grain! sebastian rahtz ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 3 Jun 87 16:58:46 CDT Reply-To: Michael Sperberg-McQueen Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Michael Sperberg-McQueen Subject: Weekly updates? This is to comment on Sebastian Rahtz's suggestion to make HUMANIST produce a weekly digest instead of a daily stream of new mail. I agree that daily influxes of new mail can be distracting, but I think we are better off with the system as it stands. I won't dwell on the obvious point that a weekly digest would involve a fairly substantial change to LISTSERV (which runs a continuously active 'server machine' to accept mail sent to a list, and forward it to the active members of that list automatically; most LISTSERV machines also handle subscriptions and cancellations without human intervention). Nor shall I belabor the point that a weekly digest requires preparation and editing -- thankless work for which it really seems unfair for us to volunteer Willard. ListServ makes it relatively easy to run a conference, but only because the host must seldom intervene. If the conference host must edit the mail and produce a digest manually, who will ever volunteer to be a host? The mild inefficiency of sending multiple copies of the mail across the Atlantic is readily corrected if someone on that side has a VM/CMS machine and the new "distributed LISTSERV" -- assuming UToronto has the distributed version too. But is it worth the effort? A digest, however well constructed, is never a substitute for the actual conversation, and not often a perfect guide to it: our individual interests varying so much, a single digest might find it hard to serve everyone's purposes. Also, while I can usually find five minutes to read one day's Humanist mail, I won't often find twenty minutes for a week's worth. And I at least find the development of discussion over real time more interesting. For context, I do save the mail up and print it off periodically for review; as S.R. points out, that's not hard to do. Michael Sperberg-McQueen ========================================================================= Date: 4-JUN-1987 16:33:32 Reply-To: LOU%UK.AC.OXFORD.VAX1@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: LOU%UK.AC.OXFORD.VAX1@AC.UK Concerning LISTSERVER and multiple copies flying (more like waddling) across the Atlantic... Which JANET IBM CMS site would like to volunteer to be a distributed LISTSERV node? It should be one fairly near water [for walking on], with a local committment to supporting arts computing in general and networking in particular and of course a really uptodate mail server. Come to think of it Sebastian ...... Meanwhile, I would still like to know where I should send the Text Archive snapshot so that people can get it direct. And also how to get whatever's there myself. I agree with Michael SPMcQ that the only point of having Humanist is as a continuous flow of information (or whatever it is). Unfortunately, the JANET/EARN/BITNET connexion is still plagued by machine failures, inconsistent address tables, lost messages, inadequate messaging protocols etc. So instead of a flow we tend to get nothing at all for a few days and then 29 in a row, just like buses. This may also have something to do with the astonishment with which I have been reading the discussion about whether or not electronic publication "counts" in some sense. In my book, this medium has a very long way to go indeed before it could reasonably be called publication. For a start, it's not accessible to everyone. Lou ========================================================================= Date: 4 June 1987, 23:40:39 EDT Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion Comments: Re: Electronic Publication From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS It seems obvious that electronic publication, like other activities related to computing, seldom if ever counts professionally in the humanities. For this reason, I'm told, much good courseware doesn't get designed by those who are best qualified to design it, and even articles and reviews printed in reputable journals rarely mean very much on a c.v. In part, as a friend just pointed out to me, this is justified; the integrity of the discipline is at stake. I wonder, however, how some of the finer work in computing can be rigidly distinguished with respect to worth from compilation of bibliographies or editing of texts, for example? In any event, those of us who find ourselves supporers of computing in the humanities can do something about defining our work academically and raising its standards. We can also, together, lobby for its recognition, and thus the SIG of which this discussion group is a product. Take electronic publishing. Following the analogy nearest at hand, we could form an electronic journal, with an editor, an editorial board, and all the rest. What would the relationship be between this journal and the printed variety? How would the medium influence the message? In length of articles? In style? Alas, it would in language, but English is the current lingua franca. It seems to me that the sine qua non of worthwhile electronic publication is quality of language and thought as well as accuracy of information. This means good editing and demanding review. It could be done (I think should be done), though at some risk to the first few contributors. Any takers -- or givers? Having completed two substantial academic papers for which neither the research notes nor the written words touched paper until the very end, I have some confidence that electronic publication in our sense need be neither trivial nor slapdash. My faith in this is that if we do a first-class job in our common profession, it will begin to be properly recognized. To be practical: we could form a separate ListServ for this journal; contributions to it would be mailed to the editor; he or she would mail these to the editorial board for consideration, or to readers; rejection, revision, publication would ensue; the readership would consist of the members of the discussion group. Some subjects come immediately to mind: computing activities at university X; reviews of software and hardware; proposals for design and implementation of software; computational methodologies; administrative structures for support of computing in the humanities; and so forth. In some cases, articles could be "reprinted" from newsletters or small journals, whose circulation is unfortunately restricted; in other cases articles might anticipate publications in print. No doubt there are many problems with such a proposal. If they seem worthy, please point them out. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Jun 87 14:06:31 GMT Reply-To: CMI011%UK.AC.SOUTHAMPTON.IBM@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: CMI011%UK.AC.SOUTHAMPTON.IBM@AC.UK re: humanist publication a) OK, so other people prefer their meat daily. I ride a bike, so I am not used to Lou Burnard's buses, but I dont actually find that the HUMANIST messages are backing up like that. My site gets them via a UUCP link to a proper JANET site, so maybe that reshuffles them. Anyway, daily or weekly meat is relatively trivial - what about size of contributions? b) Willard's note about an electronic journal is attractive, but I do not see it working for the simple reason that the technology isnt up to it (nor looks like being). All the paraphernalia of a typeset book isnt there just as a nicety, it all serves a purpose, and the e-mail environment that most of us live in (I think I am well off in a Unix world, if I had to read Humanist on this IBM I use for sending, I would give up!) does not have the facilities to convey thoughts as we are used to do on paper. That said, there is no reason why a conventional journal should not operate as Willard suggests (I presume some do) - why not do all that he suggests but just print it at the end (which is all most of us would do anyway!). Now if you suggest distributing papers in TeX format for us to print locally... but there would be howls of protest about that. Does one NEED a new journal? all the problems (who are the editors? how does it get credibility? build up a circulation? etc etc) would be there for the E-Journal as for the paper one (save ONLY for printing costs, and you would simply be asking people to pay for that on the fly instead of as a subscription ). I think Willard's most interesting point is when he suggests that computer work be given as much credence as, say, editing a text. That I must agree with - but I dont think an E-Journal would help. What do punters think of the floppy disc SCOPE? in many ways, thats an attractive option, as the PC environment is much more civilised than the e-mail one. What about all Willard's ideas going toward something like that? Sebastian Rahtz P.S. sorry, Lou, I dont think we have LISTSERV here. Computers are for FORTRAN in Southampton! but I am pursuing the matter. ========================================================================= Date: 05 Jun 87 17:10:18 bst Reply-To: R.J.HARE%UK.AC.EDINBURGH@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: R.J.HARE%UK.AC.EDINBURGH@AC.UK Subject: Electronic Publishing Picking up only one of Sebastian Rahtz's points, I think its true to say that (though there are other reasons), 'humanists' here at Edinburgh are reluctant to do a lot of work on the computer (any computer!) because such work is not visible to the people who assess (dangerous term at the moment!) their work. An electronic journal would be similarly invisible to such people, and therefore not much better from that point of view than any other work on the computer. It's interesting to realise that this may well be a general problem. This is a subjective opinion, formed as a result of casual conversations with various people around here, but I think that this situation might be changing (locally!) - the sooner the better I feel. Roger Hare. PS. What's a bus? ========================================================================= Date: 5 June 1987, 15:33:00 EDT Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Received: by ASUACAD (Mailer X1.23b) id 5924; Thu, 04 Jun 87 19:13:15 MST Date: Thu, 04 Jun 87 19:12:36 MST From: Dan Brink Subject: credit To: Willard In a HUMANIST note dated May 31, Jeff Gillette addresses the issue of academic "credit" for computer activity: Do tenure and promotion committees value programming, software reviewing, and other of the activities so typical of HUMANIST addressees? (A recent issue of the Chronicle covered this matter in some detail; I would recommend it to anyone interested in such matters.) The Chronicle of Higher Education (3/18/87: XXXIII, #27, p. 1: "Software for teaching given little credit in Tenure Reviews" I do think that computing activity is little valued by colleagues (unless their printers won't work). In my department, for example, writing software ranked dead last in a list of 35 activities considered worthy for English faculty. And, in fact, I have dropped the MLJ column because the activity is so little valued. Further, we all know of cases in which well known and respected humanists have been forced out of the profession. At the same time, I was not hired to work with computers. (The micro didn't exist when I was hired!) So, it is to some degree my own doing. And I have not really used the computer as a tool in my own research; I have worked on the improvement of the tool itself. A number of people, like Jones, Oakman, Smith, Abercrombie, etc. have dealt with the problem by moving to computer science departments or by receiving an administrative assignment officially condoning their humanities computing activities. That, I think, is the key. Those entering the field now would be well advised to be sure that their computer activity officially be made part of their job description. Computer familiarity will probably be a real plus for humanists entering the job market in the next few years; they should be sure that they will be given full credit for their activity down the road. But programming, running computer centers, etc., is not, and probably should not be, valued as research. Enough of this; back to FLEXTEX . . . ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 06 Jun 87 13:55:30 BST Reply-To: CAMERON%UK.AC.EXETER@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: CAMERON%UK.AC.EXETER@AC.UK Subject: Phonetics/Publications This week I have been absent from Exeter for three days - on my return I found a dozen communications from the Remote Grey Book. The subject under discussion is obviously an interesting one but I found wading through my electronic mail and following the discussion on the print out a very tiresome process. I do not think that I should welcome a plethora of articles in this form. Abstracts, bibliographies, yes. The danger of ready availibility is ready forgetability or ignorability. As for assessing 'status' of electronic articles, we obviously have to ask the inevitable question of why an article is written. If its aim is uniquely to gain promotion, then electronic diffusion wi have very little status, or one comparable to that of home-produced material at present. A student here has produced an elementary program for automatic correction of French phonetic transciption. Who else is working in this field? Who has perfected the process? Who would be prepared to cooperate? Keith Cameron ========================================================================= Date: 7 June 1987, 16:59:11 EDT Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS Although it is barely more than a week old, our talk about electronic publication has already taken on an interesting shape. The following is an elaborated summary. It is not intended to conclude our discussion but to alert you to it directions. The discussion began with the possibility that HUMANIST could be used to distribute files centrally and with the recognition that printed journals do certain things rather poorly. A proposal for an electronic journal, however, provoked significant criticism on two grounds: (1) that it would give its contributors little or no professional recognition, and (2) that the electronic medium is at present incapable of representing typographic effects (such as italics) and the characters of many languages other than English. It seems highly unlikely that as humanists we can correct the almost universal disregard for work in computing among the committees that govern hiring, tenure, and promotion. There seem to be two reasons for this disregard. The major one is that academic "job descriptions" seldom if ever recognize this kind of work. One of us suggested that when individuals are hired for academic jobs they should attempt to get computing activities explicitly mentioned among their duties. First, however, we need to understand the appropriate analogies. What sorts of work are we talking about? Is some of it equivalent to committee work? to compilation of bibliographies and other duties of running a journal? to editing of texts? What kind of involvement with computing in the humanities (if any) should be recognized as genuine research? We could ask, for example, what a specialist in literary criticism or theory does that in principle is more research-like than the designer of software for sophisticated textual analysis. The second reason for the disregard from our academic masters and colleagues may be the often poor quality of the writing (and sometimes thinking) associated with computing. The informality of the medium may have quite a bit to do with this. Mainframe editors are in general so primitive and screen images so difficult to proofread that we are tempted to slap something down and dash it off without much thought. We can do something about this, it has been suggested, by peer-review and editorial intervention. Nevertheless, informality in an electronic discussion allows for the communal development of ideas. Some of us have suggested that in cooperation with one or more established journals we distill from our discussions items to be printed in those journals, on the analogy of Bix in Byte magazine, though not in the same format. (The president of the ACH has mentioned the possibility of such publication in the quarterly newsletter of that organization.) It has also been pointed out that in computer science, articles can be circulated as "technical reports" without any perceived conflict with later publication in refereed journals -- and without the "brownie points." Our discussion seems to have converged on an understanding of what the electronic medium is and is not suitable for. Thus to attempt a close analogue of the refereed journal would be a mistake; at the same time, there is a need for a means of publication that takes advantage of the informality and rapidity of electronic mail. To allow for this almost conversational informality, editorial intervention needs to be kept at a minimum. Editing is required in the transition into print, however. Perhaps, as an affiliated activity of the ACH and ALLC, we should ask for the help of these two organizations in publishing summaries of our discussions here and various newsworthy items. I would also like to suggest that we talk with the editors of such journals as CHum about circulating versions of articles to be published there. Reviews of software are particularly crucial. Please let us all know what you think. (The length of this note is 73 lines & about 4000 characters long.) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 08 Jun 87 10:57:39 BST Reply-To: CAMERON%UK.AC.EXETER@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: CAMERON%UK.AC.EXETER@AC.UK Subject: Electronic Publication As intimated in last communication about HUMANIST publication, in favour of SHORT notices, abstracts, reviews. bibliographies, publicity, etc. New methods demand new styles and it should be possible to develop a new style of writing for electronic publication - universal system of truncation, abbreviation, notation which would be interpreted and formatted by universally distributed local programs etc. KCC. ========================================================================= Date: 11-JUN-1987 10:37:30 Reply-To: GW2%UK.AC.YORK.VAXA@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: GW2%UK.AC.YORK.VAXA@AC.UK Subject: MILTON PROJECT PROPOSAL First thoughts prompted by reading the discussion about electronic publishing: The new medium makes possible new forms of intellectual work, forms of collective research and collaborative writing that have not yet been defined, professionally or institutionally. In a spirit or experiment, i want to propose a collaboration, to any and all who are interested. The focus will be John Milton. The substantial example & inspiration might be Christopher Hill's MILTON AND THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION, together with Stephen Greenblatt's RENAISSANCE SELF-FASHIONING. They suggest a form of cultural history which could be refined and extended by collaboration. Anybody there?? ========================================================================= Date: 11 June 1987, 22:07:54 EDT Reply-To: Willard McCarty Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Willard McCarty A fellow HUMANIST here mentioned to me over dinner (very good it was, too) his frustration with notes that don't contain the name of the sender. On some systems one can easily guess at least the first or last name, but if your userid is "43256_XRRG," for example, it's not so easy. A human name gives the imagination something to work with. On a VM/CMS system a user gets his or her full name included by putting it in the NAMES file and then opting for the "long" option when sending a note. I don't know what one does on other systems. Alternatively, you can just sign your name to the bottom of your notes to HUMANIST. So, I propose that henceforth we submit only signed notes. If for some reason you want to send an anonymous message, send it to me and I'll pass it on to HUMANIST without your name or userid attached. Thanks for your patience. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 12 Jun 87 09:47:59 BST Reply-To: CAMERON%UK.AC.EXETER@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: CAMERON%UK.AC.EXETER@AC.UK Subject: CALL CONF/EXETER For all HUMANIST readers - accommodation still available if required. UNIVERSITY OF EXETER PROGRAM STRUCTURE and PRINCIPLES in CALL Lopes Hall, September 21 -23 1987. COST 50 pounds all inclusive - pro rata rates available (Draft programme) MONDAY September 21 16.30 - 18.00 Registration 18.00 Reception 19.00 Dinner 20.15 S.Dodd (Exeter) CALL and the chalkface. D.F.Clarke, (U.E.A.) Design considerations in the production of extended computer assisted reading materials TUESDAY September 22 08.00 Breakfast 09.30 P.Hickman, (La Ste Union) Structuring interactive grammar practice programs. D.Ferney, (Wolverhampton Poly.) A computer model of the French native speaker's skill with grammatical gender. 10.45 Coffee 11.15 O.Durrani, (Durham) Designer Labyrinths: Text mazes for language learners. A.Benwell, (Lanchester Poly.) How we use HELP facilities. 13.00 Lunch 14.30 A.Kukulska-Hulme, (Aston) Liberation or constraint : the useful- ness of a program interface to a vocabulary database. G.A.Inkster, (Lancaster) Databases as a learning activity. 15.45 Tea 16.15 Workshop : Reading Programs - D.F.Clarke (U.E.A.); I.Morris (Man chester Poly.). Language Programs - D.Ashead (B'ham); O.Durrani (Durham). 18.30 Wine reception 19.00 Dinner 20.15 J.D.Fox, (U.E.A.) Can CAL aid vocabulary acquisition? L.M.Wright, (UC, Bangor) Aspects of text storage and text compression in CALL. WEDNESDAY September 23 08.00 Breakfast 09.30 D.Scarborough (City London Poly.) The computer as a teaching resource on a Commercial French course. J.E.Galletly (Buckingham) Elementary verbal phrase syntax- checker for French sentences. 10.45 Coffee 11.15 Workshop: Language programs : M.Blondel (City London Poly.); B.Farrington (Aberdeen); P.Hickman (La Ste Union); D.Ferney (B'ham); M.L'Huillier (Brunel). 13.00 Lunch 14.15 B.Farrington, (Aberdeen) A.I. Grandeur et servitude M.Yazdani, (Exeter) Tools for second language teaching. Future projects. 15.45 Tea KCC/EXETER ========================================================================= Date: 12-JUN-1987 14:55:09 Reply-To: GW2%UK.AC.YORK.VAXA@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: GW2%UK.AC.YORK.VAXA@AC.UK Subject: MORE ABOUT PROPOSED MILTON PROJECT close MILTON PROJECT : SECOND PROPOSAL -------------------------------- A ========================================================================= Date: 12-JUN-1987 16:49:44 Reply-To: GW2%UK.AC.YORK.VAXA@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: GW2%UK.AC.YORK.VAXA@AC.UK Subject: MILTON PROJECT: A SECOND PROPOSAL I want to offer some more details about the proposed collaborative project on Milton. Don't let the initial reference to Hill & Greenblatt put you off ...my interest in Milton begins from an encounter with that body of work, but is not circumscribed by it. I would like to invite collaboration on a close linguistic study of the early poetry, exploring Milton's affinities with Spenser and Shakespeare, within the historical framework of the development of Early Modern English. Obviously this kind of inquiry lends itself, in its initial phase at least, to the use of a computer to compile the data. Once the OED is available on-line it will be possible to ask complex questions about the history of the language with a new precision. I'm not sure how to formulate the question of 'affinity' in a fashion appropriate to a package like the Oxford Concordance Program. The question that 'really' interests me comes after this preliminary work. I want to test my merely speculative sense that Milton stands (ever-belated) at the close of a period of intense linguistic innovation; that his freedom (at the level of word-formation and syntactical experiment) is significantly diminis inhibition, anxiety and self-censorship are the shaping ideological conditions of Milton's writing. This would lead into an investigation of the paternal metaphor in Milton, the successive inscriptions of the father in his texts. (The scrivener-musician fascinates me...) One escape from this intimate tyranny seems to have been the theory and practice promising a vision of a redeemed sexuality. These are, for me, the issues that reading Milton suggests most insistently. I would be delighted to hear from anyone who finds them interesting enough to merit some systematic collective investigation. Geoff Wall =============================================================================== ========================================================================= Date: 15-JUN-1987 11:43:09 Reply-To: GW2%UK.AC.YORK.VAXA@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: GW2%UK.AC.YORK.VAXA@AC.UK Subject: TO USERS OF NOTA BENE I'd be very interested to hear from anyone with experience of using the NOTA BENE WP program, to help me decide whether to acquire it for our deptartment's IBM PC. Thanks Geoff Wall York ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 Jun 87 20:05 EDT Reply-To: JMBHC@CUNYVM Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: JMBHC@CUNYVM Subject: TO USERS OF NOTA BENE In-Reply-To: HUMANIST Discussion -- 15-JUN-1987 11:43:09 Hi. We have/use nota bene with our faculty. They love it. I've just gotten my own copy (haven't even opened it yet), but I'm sure that I'll make it an often used package. I plan to use it for manuscripts, mainly. At any rate, I'll ask Bob Tannenbaum to reply to you since he know more about it. Joanne Badagliacco, Hunter College ========================================================================= Date: 15 June 1987, 21:07:32 EDT Reply-To: "Bill Winder (416) 960-9793" Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: "Bill Winder (416) 960-9793" I was interested to see that prolog is offered as a humanist programming language. I have used Turbo Prolog for about a year and I'm now considering proposing it for applications in the context of a French lexicography course. Before doing so I would like to have an opinion on a few questions from the forerunners in this area (L. Burkholder et S. Ratz seem to have had such experience -- hopefully there are others). The first question, which has plagued me since I adopted Turbo Prolog as a programming environment, is whether it is sufficiently powerful for large scale (micro) applications. Would not other prologs be better, such as Logicware's, or Marseilles's Prolog II? There have been several criticisms levelled at Turbo Prolog, most of which seem trivial (such as the fact that it is not interpreted, but rather compiled prolog). The criticism that it is a typed prolog might be important -- I have already run into situations where domain typing has forced me to multiply predicates for each argument type. A case in point: to do a sort on a large file (over 64 K) some rather tricky programming techniques are required. The innovation of prolog as a programming language is that it "de- algorithmatises" programming, at least to some degree. But in Turbo Prolog, where large applications require baroque, stack- and heap-sparing procedures, the otherwise logical development of a prolog programme is lost. In short, could anyone suggest reasons for preferring another prolog to Turbo Prolog, or for preferring another language (such as Snobol or Icon)? Does anyone use Turbo Prolog at all? All remarks in this vein would be appreciated. Bill Winder (Winder @ UTOREPAS) ========================================================================= Date: 16 June 1987, 00:36:52 EDT Reply-To: "Stephen R. Reimer (416) 585-4576" Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: "Stephen R. Reimer (416) 585-4576" Re: Nota Bene Our esteemed sysop, Willard McCarty, has been a regular user of Nota Bene since sometime shortly before or after the birth of Steve Siebert; indeed, I am sure that Willard has published a review of NB somewhere, but I've forgotten the reference. Perhaps he could be persuaded to say a few words? or, at least, to remind us of where his review appeared? ========================================================================= Date: 16-JUN-1987 09:00:06 Reply-To: SUSAN%UK.AC.OXFORD.VAX2@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: SUSAN%UK.AC.OXFORD.VAX2@AC.UK For reviews of Nota Bene, see (1) Willard McCarty, Computers and the Humanities 20 (1986), 62-71. (2) D.H.A Kaferly, Literary and Linguistic Computing 2 (1987), 37-39. Susan Hockey ========================================================================= Date: 16-JUN-1987 10:26:52 Reply-To: LOU%UK.AC.OXFORD.VAX1@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: LOU%UK.AC.OXFORD.VAX1@AC.UK Re Geoff Wall's request for comments on ways of mechanising the search for affinities (if that is what he meant), I thought of quite a neat way of doing this in SQL in the shower this morning. If you have a table A containing columns WD and REF where WD is any feature of potential interest and REF is where it occurs in text A; and likewise a table B with cols WD and REF for text B, then the SQL statement select A.REF AREF, B.REF BREF, COUNT(*) ECHOES from A,B where A.WD = B.WD group by A.REF,B.REF having count(*) > 5 order by echoes desc will produce a list of the places in A and B where the same features are to be found in descending order of the number of such features shared at each place. The 'having' bit rules out places where there are fewer than 5 shared features - obviously this can be tweaked. I've left it deliberately vague what 'features' and 'places' mean - but if you thought of them as 'interesting word stems' and 'sentence' I wouldnt quarrel with you. I haven't tried it, but it ought to work! Joe Raben's work on Miltonic echoes in Shelley (written long before the invention of SQL) is what put the idea into my head. That, and dropping the soap. Lou Burnard ========================================================================= Date: 16 June 1987, 08:13:39 EDT Reply-To: Willard McCarty Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Willard McCarty Subject: Who Speaks to Whom, and Who Cares Some time ago, prompted by complaints about too much from HUMANIST, I suggested that replies to questions, such as the most recent one about Nota Bene, should go directly to the questioner, and that the questioner might then gather up the interesting replies after some interval and publish them on HUMANIST. Could we come to an agreement about whether we adopt this scheme or not? Please send your preference to me directly (MCCARTY at UTOREPAS.BITNET), and when I get a sufficient number of replies, I'll publish them here. Any other scheme to regulate the flow of conversation is also welcome. Yours, W.M. ========================================================================= Date: 16 June 1987, 07:53:14 EDT Reply-To: Dr Abigail Ann Young 1-416-585-4504 Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Dr Abigail Ann Young 1-416-585-4504 I wonder if anyone else in the T.O. area saw the article/opinion piece in the Toronto Globe and Mail over the weekend bemoaning the degenerative effect which desktop publishing was already having on book publishing, standards of typography and editing, quality of finished book, etc. It did not go quite as far as saying that DTP is responsible for the Decline of Western Civilisation As We Know It, but the author did definitely foresee the end of The Book in the near future. Now obviously this is to say the least grossly exaggerated. I've been hearing these mournful plaints about the decline of typography and editing ever since paperback novels cost 50 cents..... But it is clear that the phenomena observed are real -- that is, standards of typography and editing have declined, the quality of many printed books is very poor (I don't mean the quality of their content, but their "production values"!), etc -- however faulty the reasoning which lays this all at the foot of DTP may be. My perspective on this is as someone very much involved in a scholarly publishing operation. REED, where I've worked one way or another since 1976, sees its volumes of edited texts straight through from transcription of MSS to camera-ready final proof in-house. One of the reasons is, of course, the need to maintain control over the scholarly quality of the edition and its apparatus, but another chief reason is a deep concern over the quality of the final book from the point of view of design and production. Happily, this concern is shared by our publisher, the University of Toronto Press, and its design department. But it seems to me that DTP is far from a force working against quality in production and design: until reading this article it wouldn't have occurred to me that someone could cast recent improve- ments in computer-based typesetting and pseudo-typesetting as the villain of the piece. In fact, I'd always thought that the great advantage of DTP for the scholarly community is that it places the ability to maintain that kind of control over both aspects of the final book, which we have been able to enjoy at REED because we are a large project with a major university press behind us, within the grasp of most academics working on a university campus. I think that more and more university computer centres and departments are likely to make available the equipment and expertise needed to allow individual editors of journals or authors able to control and produce their own work up at least the first proof stage, if they wish. Surely the DTP can be used to reverse a trend toward poor quality in book production, rather than increase it, at least among those groups to whom high-quality book production would be important. I don't really think very much of electronic publication for a lot of reasons, and especially one which Lou mentioned, and no-one else really seems to have picked up in subsequent discussion, that is, that it is accessible to such a small audience of users/readers. But using electronic means to improve the quality of conventional scholarly publishing really seems to me an exciting possibility. As the quality output devices like laser printers improve, it seems likely that DTP may make scholarly books less expensive to produce. What do people think? Is anyone else interested? Abigail Ann Young YOUNG at UTOREPAS ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 Jun 87 11:33:10 EDT Reply-To: John Bradley Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: John Bradley Subject: DTP Discussion Abigail Young's comments on DTP, and the effect on the quality of today's publications strikes a responsive chord in me -- DTP is an area I have been looking at quite closely for some time. I think a certain amount of the negative comment in the Toronto Globe and Mail article can be easily explained: the natural human trait to emphasize the negative side of change. Of course, DTP is, unfortunately, often used in such a way that it degrades quality, and, indeed, such an article can be useful in that it points these problems out. However, I think it is foolish to ONLY look at the negative side. It seems to me that there are two reasons why DTP might reduce the quality of output: (1) The technology cannot do as good a job as traditional methods. (2) The control over the technology is put in the hands of people without the required skills. Item (1) is, I think, gradually fading as an issue. For example, it's true that Laser printer output is not as good quality as a true typesetter, however, PostScript typesetters such as the Linotronic 100 or 300 also make it possible to use DTP software and equipment to produce typeset quality images. Another example: hyphenation in some DTP software is not as well done as it should be, however, the pressure of the marketplace is already forcing developers to make improvements in this and other areas. Indeed, TeX already makes very high quality work available to anyone with a micro computer -- although at the steep cost of learning how to use this complex and often subtle package. Point 2 is, I think, really the central issue, and is likely to remain so. Really good work in this area cannot be done by amateurs. In the interest of reducing costs, "camera ready" copy is being produced by people without the ability to judge the quality of what they are producing. Almost every day I see people who have no understanding of what they can reasonably expect from software and hardware: for example, I still talk to at least 1 person a week who is planning to produce camera ready copy for a book by connecting a laser printer or our typesetter to WordPerfect. Each time I explain that WordPerfect CAN drive our PostScript typesetter or laser printer -- but does far too inadequate a job in many ways (for example, of hyphenation and justification) to meet the standards that one would expect for a scholarly work. Clearly, the decision to use WordPerfect for this purpose was made by a person who is ill equipped to decide! I guess the issue is one of education. I believe that high quality work can come out of DTP, and that DTP permits new publishing ventures to be considered and tried. However, the quality issue needs to be better understood in the community. At U of T I am currently attempting to put together a brief seminar to introduce some of these issues to the university community. Perhaps this type of thing is needed at other places. I'd certainly appreciate comments from anyone who might be interested. Please contact me directly at the following address. I'd be glad to produce a summary of comments, and circulate via HUMANIST. .... John Bradley BRADLEY at UTORONTO ========================================================================= Date: 16 June 1987, 11:32:35 EDT Reply-To: Dr Abigail Ann Young 1-416-585-4504 Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Dr Abigail Ann Young 1-416-585-4504 Is anyone on this list working with English renaissance poetry, eg Spenser? I need to consult such a person about a possible classical/humanistic (in its more traditional historical meaning) literary allusion, but don't want to take up everyone's time. Thank you! Abigail Ann Young Records of Early English Drama University of Toronto YOUNG at UTOREPAS ========================================================================= Date: 17 June 1987, 22:53:28 EDT Reply-To: Willard McCarty Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Willard McCarty Subject: Autobiographies As most of you will know, I have asked anyone interested in becoming a member of HUMANIST to send me a brief description of what he or she does to support computing in the humanities. Little did I suspect when I first asked for these descriptions that I would get so many interesting autobiographical statements. As these have accumulated, I have become more and more convinced that they should be shared with everyone so that we can all get to know each other and see what it is that we do as a professional group. What I propose, then, is to edit what I have into a convenient form and distribute it to all HUMANISTs. Some of you may wish to send me a revised version of what you sent previously (given that you could not have guessed what might be done with those words eventually), and some may not. So, at the risk of angering those who may be away from their e-mail for the next two weeks, let's say that I will wait until July 1 (Canada Day) before I act on this idea to allow anyone who wants to revise his or her life-story to send the improved version to me. Please do not ask me to send you your contribution so that you can decide whether or not to revise it. If in doubt, write out a new one. Be as brief as you can, but try to cover all of what you do and wish to do in this area; specify your institional status; your academic or non-academic background; and anything else you think would be of interest to the rest. You may recall a plan to circulate a detailed questionnaire that would ask for some of this information and other things in a much more detailed form. That questionnaire is still in the works. Meanwhile, as an interim and exploratory measure, the brief autobiographies will help us understand what needs to be asked. Thanks for your cooperation. I think you'll agree that the result will be more than worth the effort. Yours, W.M. ========================================================================= Date: 18 June 1987, 15:35:18 EDT Reply-To: ZACOUR@UTOREPAS Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: ZACOUR@UTOREPAS At Willard McCarty's suggestion, a brief baring... Norman Zacour Professor of Medieval History at the University of Toronto (just retired); interested especially in the history of the papacy of Avignon; just finished writing about the treatment of Jews and Muslims in 14th century l egal works; now working on the history of the college of cardinals in the Middl e Ages; has written a short manual on WordPerfect to get students of the Centre for Medieval Studies up and running on the IBM; and some quick programming for a blind friend who is a writer and a professor of English, to simplify his Life with DOS and Company, word processing in general, and keeping data about his students in particular. Interested in hearing about any software that will handle multiple variants of medieval mss., to produce notes giving the lemma, the line number, the variant(s) and their witnesses, etc. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 18 Jun 87 12:48:46 EDT Reply-To: "Grace Logan (Arts Computing Office)" Sender: HUMANIST Discussion Comments: Warning -- RSCS tag indicates an origin of DCSMAIL@WATDCS From: "Grace Logan (Arts Computing Office)" Does anyone out there have a good, concise, clear introduction to Artificial Intelligence and/or Expert Systems? Articles,short books, references of any kind would be much appreciated. I would like to include something about these matters in a brief introduction for first year students and I find my own knowledge rather patchy, dis- jointed and impressionistic. I'd be grateful for even a reasonable definition. cheers,, Grace Logan, Arts Computing, U.of Waterloo Waterloo, Ont. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 19-JUN-1987 13:35 EST Reply-To: IDE@VASSAR Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: IDE@VASSAR Subject: nota bene I am just now reading the comments concerning nota bene and wonder if anyone is aware of the lengthy and very good review of it in the first issue of Bits & Bytes Newsletter? ========================================================================= Date: 19 Jun 87 11:54:48 bst Reply-To: R.J.HARE%UK.AC.EDINBURGH@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: R.J.HARE%UK.AC.EDINBURGH@AC.UK Subject: LISTSERVFILELIST --- Forwarded message: Subject: LISTSERVFILELIST From: R.J.HARE Date: 05 Jun 87 14:04:10 bst To: listserv%toronto.bitnet@uk.ac.rl.earn Msg ID: <05 Jun 87 14:04:10 bst 030961@EMAS-A> SENDME LISTSERV FILELIST --- End of forwarded message ========================================================================= Date: 19 Jun 87 11:55:52 bst Reply-To: R.J.HARE%UK.AC.EDINBURGH@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: R.J.HARE%UK.AC.EDINBURGH@AC.UK Subject: Electronic Publishing --- Forwarded message: Subject: Electronic Publishing From: R.J.HARE Date: 05 Jun 87 17:10:18 bst To: humanist%utoronto.bitnet@uk.ac.rl.earn Msg ID: <05 Jun 87 17:10:18 bst 030065@EMAS-A> Picking up only one of Sebastian Rahtz's points, I think its true to say that (though there are other reasons), 'humanists' here at Edinburgh are reluctant to do a lot of work on the computer (any computer!) because such work is not visible to the people who assess (dangerous term at the moment!) their work. An electronic journal would be similarly invisible to such people, and therefore not much better from that point of view than any other work on the computer. It's interesting to realise that this may well be a general problem. This is a subjective opinion, formed as a result of casual conversations with various people around here, but I think that this situation might be changing (locally!) - the sooner the better I feel. Roger Hare. PS. What's a bus? --- End of forwarded message ========================================================================= Date: 19 Jun 87 11:53:42 bst Reply-To: MCCARTY%UTOREPAS@UK.AC.RL.EARN Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: R.J.HARE%UK.AC.EDINBURGH@AC.UK Subject: Forwarded message --- Forwarded message: From: MCCARTY%UTOREPAS@UK.AC.RL.EARN Date: 4 June 1987, 07:18:59 EDT To: R.J.HARE@UK.AC.EDINBURGH Via: UK.AC.RUTHERFORD.EARN ; (to uk.ac.edinburgh.emas-a) 04 Jun 87 12:39: Via: UK.AC.RL.EARN; Thu, 04 Jun 87 12:36:39 BST Msg ID: Received: From UTORONTO (MAILER) By UK.AC.RL.IB (MAILER) ; Thu, 04 Jun 87 12:36:38 BST Received: from UTOREPAS(MCCARTY) by UTORONTO (Mailer X1.23b) id 2528; Thu, 04 Jun 87 07:22:47 EDT ================================================================= Welcome to HUMANIST ================================================================= HUMANIST is a Bitnet/NetNorth/EARN electronic discussion group for people who support computing in the humanities. Those who teach, review software, answer questions, give advice, program, write documentation, or otherwise support research and teaching in this area are included. Although HUMANIST is intended to help these people exchange all kinds of information, it is primarily meant for discussion rather than publication or advertisement. In general, members of the network are encouraged to ask questions and offer answers, to begin and contribute to discussions, to suggest problems for research, and so forth. One of the specific motivations for establishing HUMANIST was to allow people involved in this area to form a common idea of the nature of their work, its requirements, and its standards. Institutional recognition is not infrequently inadequate, at least partly because computing in the humanities is an emerging and highly cross-disciplinary field. Its support is significantly different from the support of other kinds of computing, with which it may be confused. Perhaps you don't think so. In any case, let us know what you do think, about this or any other relevant subject. HUMANIST is one of the inaugural projects of a new special interest group for the support of computing in the humanities, which is currently applying for joint affiliation with the Association for Computing in the Humanities (ACH) and the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing (ALLC). Information about this SIG may be obtained by sending a message to George Brett (ECSGHB@TUCC.BITNET). New members are welcome, provided that they fit the broad guidelines described above. Please tell anyone who might be interested to send a note to me, giving his or her name, address, telephone number, university affiliation, and a short description of what he or she does to support computing in the humanities. I will then add that person to the list. If anyone should wish to be dropped from the list, please send a note to that effect. =================================================================== How to Use HUMANIST =================================================================== Sending messages ----------------------------------------------------------------- Currently anyone given access to HUMANIST can communicate with all other members without restriction. A member need not be on Bitnet but can use any comparable network with access to Bitnet. Thus, to send mail to everyone simultaneously, use whatever command your system provides (e.g., NOTE or MAIL) addressed to HUMANIST at UTORONTO. Your message is then sent by your local software to the UTORONTO node of Bitnet, where the "Revised List Processor" (or ListServ) automatically redirects it to everyone currently on the list of members. [Please note that in the following description, commands will be given in the form acceptable on a VM/CMS system. If your system is different, you will have to make the appropriate translation.] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Conventions and Etiquette ----------------------------------------------------------------- Restricted conversations or asides can, of course, develop from the unrestricted discussions on HUMANIST by members communicating directly with each other. This is particularly recommended for replies to general queries, so that HUMANIST and its members are not burdened with messages of interest only to the person who asked the question and, perhaps, a few others. If, for example, one of us asks the rest about the availability of software for keeping notes in Devanagari, suggestions should be sent directly to the questioner's e-mail address, not to HUMANIST. A questioner who receives one or more generally interesting and useful replies might consider gathering them together with the original question and submitting the collection to HUMANIST. Please use your judgment about what the whole group should receive. We could easily overwhelm each other and so defeat the purpose of HUMANIST. Strong methods are available for controlling a discussion group, but self-control seems preferable. This is not to discourage controversy -- quite the contrary -- but only what could become tiresome junk-mail. Please make it an invariable practice to help the recipients of your messages scan them by including a SUBJECT line in your note. Be aware, however, that some people will read no more than the SUBJECT line, so you should take care that it is accurate and comprehensive as well as brief. Use your judgment about the length of your notes as well. If you find yourself writing an essay or have a substantial amount of information to offer, it might be better to follow on of the two methods outlined in the next section. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Distributing files ----------------------------------------------------------------- HUMANIST offers us an excellent means of distributing written material of many kinds, e.g., reviews of software or hardware. Although conventional journals remain the means of professional recognition, they are often too slow to keep up with changes in computing. With some care, HUMANIST could provide a supplementary venue of immediate benefit to our colleagues. There are two methods of distributing such material. The more specialized reports should probably be reduced to abstracts and posted in this form to HUMANISTs at large, then sent by the originators directly to those who request them. Reports of general interest, however, can be kept centrally, on the UTORONTO node, and fetched by individuals when required. To find out what is available centrally, send the following command: TELL LISTSERV AT UTORONTO SENDME LISTSERV FILELIST If you see something you want, then use the following to fetch it: TELL LISTSERV AT UTORONTO GET If you have something that you think worth posting, please send it to me, and we can then discuss its fate. Storage space on the UTORONTO node is not infinite nor ultimately free, so we need to be careful about how much we put there. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ListServ's Commands and Facilities ----------------------------------------------------------------- New members will be interested to know that one of the files centrally maintained by ListServ at UTORONTO is an archive of messages for the past month. If you have just joined and want to know the recent history of discussions, enter the following command (or its equivalent on non-VM/CMS systems): TELL LISTSERV AT UTORONTO GET HUMANIST LOG8705 ListServ will then send you the contents of the monthly archive. ListServ accepts several other commands, for example to retrieve a list of the current members or to set various options. These are described in a document named LISTSERV MEMO. This and other documentation will normally be available to you from your nearest ListServ node and is best fetched from there, since in that way the network is least burdened. You should consult with your local experts to discover the nearest ListServ; they will also be able to help you with whatever problems in the use of ListServ you may encounter. Once you have found the nearest node, type the following: TELL LISTSERV AT XXXXXX INFO ? The various documents available to you will then be listed. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Suggestions and Complaints ----------------------------------------------------------------- Suggestions about the running of HUMANIST or its possible relation to other means of communication are very welcome. So are complaints, particularly if they are constructive. Experience has shown that an electronic discussion group can be either beneficial or burdensome to its members. Much depends on what the group as a whole wants and does not want. Please make your views known, to everyone or to me directly, as appropriate. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Willard McCarty 31 May 1987 Centre for Computing in the Humanities, University of Toronto (MCCARTY@UTOREPAS.BITNET) --- End of forwarded message ========================================================================= Date: 19 Jun 87 12:02:52 bst Reply-To: R.J.HARE%UK.AC.EDINBURGH@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion Comments: cc: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS, Humanist <> From: R.J.HARE%UK.AC.EDINBURGH@AC.UK Subject: Accidental messages. You probably just got a series of your own messages blown back at you. These sho be deleted, not sent to the HUMANIST bulletin Board. This happened accidentally while we were setting up our own local bulletin board. Sorry about that - hope it don't cause too many problems! Roger Hare. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 20 Jun 87 11:38:51 BST Reply-To: CAMERON%UK.AC.EXETER@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: CAMERON%UK.AC.EXETER@AC.UK Subject: LISTSERV TELL LISTSERV AT UTORONTO SENDME LISTSERV FILELIST ========================================================================= Date: 20 June 1987, 17:46:27 EDT Reply-To: Willard McCarty Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Willard McCarty Subject: An accident and a misunderstanding Recently an accident of some sort in Edinburgh resulted in a very large number of old HUMANIST notes being sent to everyone on the list. This certainly demonstrates that the power of electronic mail, like a loosely held firehose, can turn against the user! Please be aware that anything sent to HUMANIST at UTORONTO is immediately and automatically propagated to everyone; no one here decides whether a note should be passed on or not. Once something starts to go wrong we here may be able to stop it, but only if we notice it in time. So be careful, please. We are still working on a facility for centralized storage of files here but have not yet figured out how to provide it. Until then it is useless to ask for LISTSERV FILELIST, since nothing is there except for the monthly log of past messages. In any event, once something is put there, you should fetch this FILELIST by sending the appropriate command directly to LISTSERV at UTORONTO and not -- please note -- by sending the command inside a note to HUMANIST at UTORONTO, as some of you have been doing. Thanks for your continued patience with this adolescent service. Yours, W.M. ========================================================================= Date: 21 June 1987, 23:58:31 EDT Reply-To: Willard McCarty Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Willard McCarty The following is a slightly edited collection of all the responses I received to my question about how conversations on HUMANIST should be regulated. As you will see, the preference seems to be for freely ranging discussions with a good measure of self-control. This is just what I'd hoped for -- the best form of government for free people, if I may say so. Please note the point about using a "reply" in response number 7. 1========================================================================= Date: 16-JUN-1987 14:54:15 From: UDAA270%UK.AC.KCL.CC.VAXA@AC.UK In the first days it's quite nice to get the daily messages, proof that one is indeed involved in an international network. But it does get out of hand, and I agree totally that the recent discussions of Nota Bene would have been best addressed to the originator of the query. However, to define and regulate where the fine line should be drawn between universal and personal interest seems an impossible task. As long as originators of general queries are prepared to send out summaries after a certain period, and as long as everyone else realises that a summary is forthcoming, the e-mail shouldn't be so clogged with preliminary remarks. Furthermore, it is easy enough to send a message direct to any originator and ask for a summary to be sent to Everyone if none appears. 2======================================================================== Date: 16 June 1987, 08:35:33 EDT From: Dr Abigail Ann Young YOUNG at UTOREPAS It seems to me that the flow of conversation on HUMANIST is just fine as it is: I think it's rather fun to have the sense of participation in an actual conversation. Still, I do realise that you may have to impose some kind of restraints on replies: but don't edit out the spontaneity of it! 3========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 Jun 87 09:10 PST From: Sterling Bjorndahl - Claremont Grad. School I agree that replies should go to the questioner and not the whole group. I don't know about other mail systems, but on Vax/VMS mail, when I use the "reply" command, the reply gets sent to the questioner, not the list. I think I have heard "somewhere" that this may not be true for all mailers, such as do not read the "reply-to:" line. 4========================================================================= From: Michael Sperberg-McQueen We can have completely public discussion (everyone replies via the list to any query), with the result that the conference begins to resemble the transcripts one reads in accounts of CB radio conversations (or their simulations on Compuserve). Or we can have tightly controlled discussion (everyone replies to the querier, not to the list), in which case the conference typically resembles the transcript of a Mayday frequency: one call for help after another, and nothing much in between. The people who initiate the queries often fail to report back to the list on what they were told, and the result is in general a very boring conversation. Or we can attempt a middle ground: queries of limited general interest should be answered privately -- or rather I should say answers of limited general interest should be sent privately -- and those who initiate the query should ALWAYS report back to the list anything of general interest. I vote for the middle ground, with a strong leaning toward erring on the side of public conversation. For example, some of the remarks on Nota Bene lately have been probably better sent privately... and some are, I think, of public interest. But I'd rather that the whole be public than that the whole be private.... It seems to me to be a choice between a rather free, often unstructured and frustrating, but sometimes enlightening and exciting discussion, and a much more controlled but much less exciting or interesting discussion. From time to time, if the course of the conversation warrants it, you (or someone else) can issue a plea that purely private concerns be handled off the list, in direct notes. Or the query's originator (like Dr Young) can request private responses because of a conviction that the matter is not of public interest. But so far I haven't found myself regretting the volume of the conference. Quite the opposite, I am looking forward to a fairly vigorous discussion of the merits of Turbo and other Prologs. 5========================================================================= From: Jeffrey William Gillette Count my vote for your scheme. The Usenet system, which functions by broadcast, in a fashion very similar to your List Server, there is a continuing temptation to respond publically to specific questions of limited interest. The younger (and often imature) members of the Usenet community often respond to such abuses by inundating the offending party with unfriendly "flame" mail. I should hope that Humanist participants would possess sufficient professional courtesy and/or conscience to regulate themselves. If not, however, I might arrange to put some Usenet people onto the Humanist mailing list!!! 6========================================================================= Date: Wed, 17 Jun 87 01:32:56 EDT From: DD ROBERTS (PHILOSOPHY) I still am enjoying seeing responses to questions of others, and would like that to continue at least for a while. It is not difficult for me to dash through even large quantities of mail, now that I have decided to be quite hard nosed about it (if I'm not now able to use a thing, even if it sounds interesting, I delete it-- confident that if I should need it in the future, somebody out there would help). 7========================================================================= Date: Wed, 17 Jun 87 10:06:15 -0800 From: mbb@portia.Stanford.EDU I most definitely agree with you: if person A asks "anyone know something about foo", then person B, in responding, should mail directly to A. Person A may want to synthesize the responses he/she gets and then send the synthesis to the general list. I have been the moderator for the TeX digest (TeXhax) for over six months, and this very thing can be a real pain. All it takes is for a few people to do the wrong thing to create a big mess. I imagine that most people use a mailing program and simply give some kind of "REPLY" command. The mailing program may grab the wrong address as the address to reply to. If there's one thing I've learned doing TeXhax, it's that mailer programs are really stupid, fussy and eccentric!! 8========================================================================= Date: 17-JUN-1987 11:45:43 From: GW2%UK.AC.YORK.VAXA@AC.UK Never too much for me...I really do prefer to have access to all the open conversations in progress. Then I can choose which items to read and which to ignore. But it would help if everyone were more conscientious in their use of subject-headings. ========================================================================== [This message is 129 lines long.] ========================================================================= Date: 22-JUN-1987 09:37:59 Reply-To: LOU%UK.AC.OXFORD.VAX1@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: LOU%UK.AC.OXFORD.VAX1@AC.UK Does any Humanist have experience of using any of the various mainframe free text searching systems (e.g. Basis, Cairs, Stairs, Status, Assassin, 3IP, BRS/Search ...) on anything other than straightforward library catalogue type data? I'm on a UK interuniversity working party which is currently assessing the usefulness or otherwise of such packages and would be glad to hear from anyone (especially from outside the library/info science world) who's had hands on experience of such systems (and lived to tell the tale). I should add that we're considering buying such a system at Oxford t make some of the Text Archive materials more widely available, so any comments on how humanists would like to access e.g. the complete works of Shakespeare, Milton et al from online terminals would also be interesting Lou Burnard PS In line with Willard Directive #918365 this is a Public Communication, but replies to it should be Personal; I hereby undertake to recirculare such of them as seem generally interesting ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 Jun 87 07:49 PST Reply-To: "Sterling Bjorndahl - Claremont Grad. School" Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: "Sterling Bjorndahl - Claremont Grad. School" Subject: "close" pattern matching Dear HUMANIST readers: I would like to hear from those who know about "close" pattern matching algorithms, such as are used in microcomputer spelling checkers to suggest the word you *meant* instead of the non-word you *typed*. Is there a bibliography of published materials on how such algorithms are constructed? Do they use frequency tables, or hashing? Please reply to: BJORNDAS @ CLARGRAD on Bitnet. As a responsible electronic citizen, I promise to digest and report on replies (if any). Sterling Bjorndahl Institite for Antiquity and Christianity Claremont Graduate School Claremont, CA 91711 USA ========================================================================= Date: 22-JUN-1987 12:55:57 Reply-To: CATHERINE%UK.AC.OXFORD.VAX2@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: CATHERINE%UK.AC.OXFORD.VAX2@AC.UK Subject: typography standards I am writing to add to the discussions about the decline in typesetting standards caused by desktop publishing. For some years now we at Oxford University Computing Service have supplied typesetting facilities to all British universities and polytechnics, as well as to several foreign universities. We have a Monotype Lasercomp for a typesetter, (and we hope in the fairly near future to have a PostScript typesetter). All we provide are the facilities (that is, the typesetter itself and a front end system in the form of a program called Laserset, which somewhat simplifies the commands and does syntax checking). Each user typesets his own document. By now around two hundred books have been typeset in this way. For the most part, the standard has been high, although there have of course been some notable exceptions. We ALWAYS strongly advise users to go to their publisher at the earliest stage possible, and have the typography department of the publisher design the book. When this is possible, the book should look exactly as good as any other book designed by that publisher. Problems arise, however, when the user does not yet have a publisher, or when the publisher does not have a typography department (this, unfortunately, is becoming more common). Our advice is then for the user to spend some time in libraries and bookshops looking for a suitable book whose format the user admires. It is then quite easy to use this as a model. We try to stress the importance of the look of the book, as it is easy with the Lasercomp to achieve high quality results if the design is good. It should be said that we are not engaged in desktop publishing; more in do-it-yourself publishing. Our system is probably at once easier and more difficult to abuse. We can achieve very fine control over the look of a page; finer than is possible with most desk-top publishing programs. However, no basic structure or design is imposed or even suggested, and there is nothing to stop an innocent user from producing a horrendous page. On the whole, however, our users have been quite conscientious and have made considerable efforts to produce texts which have a pleasing appearance. Perhaps this is in part because our system is a bit more difficult to use than a real desk top publishing system. The user must learn 'foreign' terms, such as pointsize, leading, hanging indents, kerning, film feeds and set feeds, all of which remind him that he is dabbling in an area of considerable tradition and expertise and art, and encourage him to walk with caution, possible even respect. Most of our users seem to feel that since they are taking the trouble to typeset their own work, they would like it to look good. ========================================================================= Date: 22 June 1987, 15:13:47 EDT Reply-To: Willard McCarty Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Willard McCarty Subject: ICON and Prolog; UNIX for humanists The following is from Joel Goldfield, with whom HUMANIST is having some trouble communicating. Please send all replies to the following network address: jdg at psc90.uucp ======================================================================== ICON programming language vs. Prolog Dear Colleagues, Those of you interested in options to Prolog might like reading Mark Olsen's article on the ICON programming language in CHum, Jan.-March issue. He also discusses ICON in relation to SNOBOL. I would be interested in hearing from anyone also working with stylostatistical applications of UNIX and on friendly interfaces of the UNIX system for humanists. --Joel D. Goldfield ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 26 Jun 87 17:22:29 GMT Reply-To: CMI011%UK.AC.SOUTHAMPTON.IBM@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: CMI011%UK.AC.SOUTHAMPTON.IBM@AC.UK I have got so desperate (sorry, gotten, for you people over the sea) that I have printed out two weeks worth of Humanist and am reading it through for things I forgot - so much for electronic browsing! Hands up all those who never do this. Points 1. yes, please sign notes. and say WHERE you are! i exchanged many notes with someone from bbn.alexander.com earlier this year without the faintest idea of where he physically was. (I know now, I asked him). 2. in re the note from Bill Winder about Prolog, can I reply here? i think it is an interesting issue. I have taught 4 languages to Arts students in the last few years (Prolog, Icon, Snobol and dBase command language) and I am not happy with any of them. To summarize what was said at a session at a conference in Southampton at Easter, a) the world doesnt want 3rd generation language programmers - it wants arts graduates with some experience in 4th generation tools, or MAYBE 5th generation languages). Ergo, teach them to use an SQL-based relational database system as the answer to almost everything (this view endorsed by a nice man from IBM) b) if you DO want a '5th gen.' language, then one tries Prolog. But its awful for a beginners course, because a) they have to learn an OS at the same time, b) the syntax is horrid, c) there is a lack of builtin functions (to sort a list, for instance), so students (well, mine) get depressed at lack of achievement. After all, all the beginning part of Prolog is much easier in a modern database. Now Turbo Prolog may get over problems b) and c) (especially if one installs the Toolbox which just came out), but a) remains , and you have the generic Prolog problems with large applications that Winder notes. I would STRONGLY criticise Turbo anyway for not implementing the pretty crucial feature of being able to assert newly learnt ideas during running. The reasons why you have to use the declaration section are clear enough, but that doesnt excuse Borland saying it is more or less C & S standard Prolog - it isnt. All that Turbo has is speed and the (wonderful) environment. You can also get those in a Prolog like Prolog II from Expert Systems International in Oxford, which provides a better growth system. Or to solve the 'large applications' problem, I propose to try next year teaching (aargh no keep away) IBM Prolog, with its interface to SQL/DS, which would take care of the donkey work. c) can I finally mention Icon? I tried this on 15 1st years, with disastrous results (maybe it was my teaching). there was too much syntax, to put it mildly (single and double quote mean different things, for instance), and the environment was non-existent. Do not get me wrong, I like Icon a lot and use it every day, but its for programmers who need it, not for beginners. Anyone care to comment? where does that leave Winder and his French lexicography? what about the Lisp-based stuff from Montreal (deredec etc)? maybe a dedicated class would like Icon. What are other peoples solutions? Question, why do Winders students need to learn programming at all? sebastian rahtz. computer science, southampton, uk ========================================================================= Date: 28 June 1987, 23:36:54 EDT Reply-To: Willard McCarty Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Willard McCarty Subject: Reminder about the Biographies I am preparing to send out or otherwise offer the slightly edited collection of biographies of HUMANISTs to all of you, but I find that I don't have biographical statements from about half of the membership. If you want to have your background, interests, and professional activities known to the rest of us, and so be able to help us define what support of humanities computing means, please be sure that you have sent your statement to me by the end of this coming week. I have statements from the following people: ----- Baldini, Pier (ATPMB@ASUACAD) Balestri, Diane Bjorndahl, Sterling - Claremont Grad. School Borchardt, Frank L. Burkholder, Leslie Burnard, Lou Bush, Chuck Cameron, Keoth Camilleri, Lelio Candlin, Francis E. Cartwright, Dana E. 3rd Evra, James W. van (PHILOSOPHY DEPT.) Griffin, Catherine Hare, Roger Henry, Chuck Ide, Nancy M. Katzen, May Kaufman, Steve, Hebrew Union College account Kennedy, Mark T. Kruse, Susan Lowry, Anita Makkuni, Ranjit McCarty, Willard McCutchan, Walter Mok, Shu-Yan Nardocchio, Elaine Ore, Espen Owen, David -UA CCIT Academic Computing Page, Stephen Rahtz, Sebastian CMI011%UK.AC.SOTON.IBM@AC.UK Richmond, S. ROBERTS, D. D. (PHILOSOPHY) Sano, Haj Sousa, Ronald de Swenson, Eva V. Thornton, Dave or Wall, Geoffrey Weinshank, Don Wiebe, M.G. Young, Abigail Ann Zacour, Norman ----- Thanks very much. Yours, W.M. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 26 Jun 87 14:43:52 EDT Reply-To: Scott Campbell Sender: HUMANIST Discussion Comments: Resent-From: Scott Campbell Comments: To: HUMANIST@UTOREPAS, HUMANIST@UTORONTO Comments: cc: ENGHUNT@UOGUELPH From: "Stuart Hunter, University of Guelph" Subject: PROLOG, LISP, AI, and all that stuff. In response to Sebastian's recent comment, I have to ask who the "they" is that wants Arts students exposed to 5th generation languages? In the long run, how many of our "run of the mill" undergraduates do we want to expose to anything more that a "competent user" level of familiarity? Don't get me wrong: I'm all for training Humanities scholars in the use of expert systems and 5th-generation languages to solve the basic problems that we, as humanist, tackle. On the other hand, I know that the majority of the undergraduate I deal with couldn't formulate a statement about many of those problems, let alone design an expert system to cope with the problems. I think we have to distinguish between what we are teaching to -- or are using to teach to -- undergraduates and what we need to know ourselves in order to teach and do our research. And that brings me back to Sebastian's statement about "them". Who is it that wants Arts Students who are experts in Prolog? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 30 Jun 87 12:27 PST Reply-To: "Sterling Bjorndahl - Claremont Grad. School" Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: "Sterling Bjorndahl - Claremont Grad. School" Subject: list of Biblical (and related) scholars on BITNET For several months I have been compiling and distributing (on an irregular basis) an "address book" of people reachable from BITNET who are in the field of Biblical Studies, or related disciplines such as Ancient Near Eastern archeology, Targumic studies, etc. It is an annotated list intended to promote use of the networks beyond narrow computer concerns and to generate academic discussion which does not necessarily centre around computers. I am now preparing a new edition. If you wish to be included, please send me a few lines including your paper-mail address and telephone number, your position and institution, and your fields of special interest. If you know of other people who may be interested in being included, please pass this message on to them. If you wish a sample of a previous version of the list, feel free to request one from me. A gratuitous aside to the people I correspond with: I will be in Germany for August and September, 1987, and will probably not have access to a connected computer during that time. Paper mail sent to me c/o the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity will be forwarded to me. Sterling Bjorndahl BJORNDAS@CLARGRAD.BITNET Institute for Antiquity and Christianity Claremont Graduate School Claremont, CA 91711 USA