Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 15, No. 131.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
[1] From: Francois Lachance <lachance@chass.utoronto.ca> (26)
Subject: Accessibility, Design and Funding
[2] From: Francois Lachance <lachance@chass.utoronto.ca> (22)
Subject: An answer with a bit of digging
[3] From: Gilad Maayan <gilad@olivesoftware.com> (40)
Subject: Accessibility, Design and Funding
[4] From: Francois Lachance <lachance@chass.utoronto.ca> (54)
Subject: RE: Accessibility, Design and Funding
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 21:38:34 -0500 (EST)
From: Francois Lachance <lachance@chass.utoronto.ca>
Subject: Accessibility, Design and Funding
From: Francois Lachance <lachance@chass.utoronto.ca>
Willard,
Intrigued by the All the News that is Fit to Scan blub, I was accessing:
http://www.uk.olivesoftware.com/conference/
and got a cannot display message.
I truncated the URL and discovered that the problem was due to resolution
settings on my system. I can understand working with Microsoft 5.0 because
of the XML components of the site as a stop gap measure until such time a
server-side solution is in place to transform XML into HTML. But why force
a screen resolution? Yes it allows the site designers to control
presentation but it does rob users of the chance to tailor the display to
their requirements.
I am puzzled at to why a British Library site would apparently ignore
access issues. The message on the home page
http://www.uk.olivesoftware.com/
makes no mention of Lynx or text-based browsers but promises "a light
version of the archive supporting version 4 of Netscape and Explorer is
due to be implemented soon." There is at least a mail to link to send
comments.
I am led to ask Humanist subscribers if they know of funding guidelines
that granting agencies use to determine accessibility requirements of the
projects and initiatives to which they will contribute.
--
Francois Lachance, Scholar-at-large
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance
20th : Machine Age :: 21st : Era of Reparation
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 21:39:06 -0500 (EST)
From: Francois Lachance <lachance@chass.utoronto.ca>
Subject: An answer with a bit of digging
Willard,
With a bit of digging, I've managed to uncover the rationale for screen
resolution requirements of the British Library Newspaper site.
http://www.olivesoftware.com/product_microfilm.htm
<cite> With ActivePaper ArchiveTM you don't have to deal with corrupted
OCR text. ActivePaper ArchiveTM uses the best OCR technology to read the
degraded text - the human brain. This is because newspaper objects are
displayed as images, whose text is always readable. The human brain, on
the other hand, does not have the searching capabilities of a computer.
For this reason, ActivePaper ArchiveTM uses Bitmap IndexingTM technology,
which enables full-text search and retrieval of images, based on their
word patterns.</cite>
And I suspect with IATH's suite of handy tools as exemplified in the
Blake archive, one could mark up such images further.
This raises some interesting perspectives and content modelling issues
around the digital imaging versus text encoding debates... or simply
re-enforces the view that encoding like reading produces a translation or
mapping of the object of that encoding or reading.
-- Francois Lachance, Scholar-at-large http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance 20th : Machine Age :: 21st : Era of Reparation--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 21:39:43 -0500 (EST) From: Gilad Maayan <gilad@olivesoftware.com> Subject: Accessibility, Design and Funding
From: Gilad Maayan <gilad@olivesoftware.com>
Mr. Lachance,
I am the Marcom for Olive Software, one of the organizers of the upcoming IES conference with the British Library. I believe you had a slight misunderstanding regaring the conference information page.
The conference site you were trying to reach, at http://www.uk.olivesoftware.com/conference, was down for a few hours this weekend. This was the reason for the "cannot display" message you saw. If you visit the page now (it has been up since Sunday morning), you will find it is a text-based page compatible with all low-level browsers and any screen resolution.
Having truncated the URL, you reached http://www.uk.olivesoftware.com/. This page is not related to the conference information site - rather, it is the opening page of the Online Archive, a highly sophisticated web application, which at present only supports IE5 and 1024 X 768.
Regards, Gilad Maayan Marcom Manager __________________________________________________
www.olivesoftware.com Phone +972-9-764-3583 Fax +972-9-764-3526 20 Hata'as St., Beit Hapa'amon Building Industrial Zone, Kefar Saba 44425 ISRAEL
-----Original Message----- From: Lachance, Francois (JUS) [mailto:Francois.Lachance@jus.gov.on.ca] Sent: Monday, July 09, 2001 7:40 PM To: 'shay@olivesoftware.com' Subject: screen resolution
Dear SHay,
I was accessing:
http://www.uk.olivesoftware.com/conference/
and got a cannot display message. I truncated the URL and discovered that the problem was due to resolution settings on my system. I can understand working with Microsoft 5.0 because of the XML components of the site. But why force a screen resolution? Yes it allows the site designers to control presentation but it does rob users of the chance to tailor the display to their requirements.
Thank you
Fran?ois Lachance 326-2524
--[4]------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 21:40:25 -0500 (EST) From: Francois Lachance <lachance@chass.utoronto.ca> Subject: RE: Accessibility, Design and Funding
Dear Gilad Maayan,
Thank you for clarifying that the conference site was down. I did eventually find the Olive Software site and learnt that the British Library newspaper archive project is using Olive Software's ActivePaper(TM) product. I've sent a message to the moderator of the Humanist discussion list about the product and the (image+OCR+XML) approach to creating searchable databases of print material. It raises some interesting issues for text encoding.
Some ancillary materials around the British Library site might prove useful for those interested in learning the rationale for the system requirements. At least a link to Olive Software's home page.
Thank you again for clarifying the relations between the various sites. I look forward to reading the case studies on the Palestine Post and the British Library pilot project following the conference.
Francois Lachance
Mr. Lachance,
I am the Marcom for Olive Software, one of the organizers of the upcoming IES conference with the British Library. I believe you had a slight misunderstanding regaring the conference information page.
The conference site you were trying to reach, at http://www.uk.olivesoftware.com/conference, was down for a few hours this weekend. This was the reason for the "cannot display" message you saw. If you visit the page now (it has been up since Sunday morning), you will find it is a text-based page compatible with all low-level browsers and any screen resolution.
Having truncated the URL, you reached http://www.uk.olivesoftware.com/. This page is not related to the conference information site - rather, it is the opening page of the Online Archive, a highly sophisticated web application, which at present only supports IE5 and 1024 X 768.
Regards, Gilad Maayan Marcom Manager __________________________________________________
www.olivesoftware.com Phone +972-9-764-3583 Fax +972-9-764-3526 20 Hata'as St., Beit Hapa'amon Building Industrial Zone, Kefar Saba 44425 ISRAEL
-----Original Message----- From: Lachance, Francois (JUS) [mailto:Francois.Lachance@jus.gov.on.ca] Sent: Monday, July 09, 2001 7:40 PM To: 'shay@olivesoftware.com' Subject: screen resolution
Dear SHay,
I was accessing:
http://www.uk.olivesoftware.com/conference/
and got a cannot display message. I truncated the URL and discovered that the problem was due to resolution settings on my system. I can understand working with Microsoft 5.0 because of the XML components of the site. But why force a screen resolution? Yes it allows the site designers to control presentation but it does rob users of the chance to tailor the display to their requirements.
Thank you
Francois Lachance 326-2524
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