LL-L "Help needed" 2003.10.17 (05) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 17.OCT.2003 (05) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Help needed"

As some of you will know, texts on the Scotstext site
(http://scotstext.org/) are presented in edited form: I make general
improvements to the orthography and occasionally grammar with a view to
presenting the Scots at its best, as far as preferences of experienced
readers in Scots will allow.

This creates problems for researchers who would sometimes much prefer to see
the original text. I decided on editing the texts, however, for the
following reasons:

    o    historically, writers in Scots have often used the English forms of
words even when the Scots pronunciation was intended (an effect which is
especially noticeable in rhyming poetry), which can be misleading for those
who aren't completely familiar with the language;

    o    traditional Scots writers are generally inconsistent with their own
spellings, writing eg, "advertize" in some places and "adverteeze" in
others, even within the same work;

    o    OCR technology is unreliable, so that even with careful checking
it's never possible to be sure that the text is letter-perfect in electronic
form;

    o    even if I did get a text letter-perfect, a researcher could never
be sure that I was always right: when he found something in the text which
didn't fit his own theories of textuality, he'd have to consider whether it
was actually a mistake originated by me.

I have now decided to provide photo-scans for those who need to see the
exact form of the text as well as presenting the texts in edited electronic
text form.

However, I don't exactly know what researchers' needs here are. Some
questions:

1. What would be the best format for presenting photo-scans on the Web?
(ideas: .gifs inside a .zip archive for download, say one page per .gif;
.pdf document consisting entirely of .gifs, one page per .gif; .gifs
presented as web pages, one or more .gifs per page, perhaps accessed via
thumbnails or just an index);

2. Would it be helpful, at least in some kinds of research, to present every
page, including pages with owners' inscriptions, children's scribbles, and
blank pages, or might I just as well cut down on download times by including
only pages with text and illustrations? (I assume that it's worth presenting
owners' inscriptions, authors' inscriptions and such things as the cover and
book page, in any case).

3. Can I assume that it's OK to clean up the pages in Photoshop? For
example, to make the background a clean white and the text a clean black,
and to remove stains, tears, dog ears and suchlike?

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Help needed

Hi, Sandy!

I've been in your kind of situation before.  So here's my farthing's worth
of advice.

I strongly recommend using pdf files for facsimiles.  If you use Adobe
Acrobat you don't have to mess with gifs and graphics programs at all.
Under "File" -> "Acquire" in Acrobat you can scan the pages directly into
pdf
format, and this creates clean facsimiles.  In that case you can also bundle
the pages, either consecutive pages (whole chapters or books in fact) or
bundles of assorted pages you want to be downloaded as a group. One of the
advantages is the combination of ease and speed.  Obviously, stains,
scribbles, etc., would appear, and I would not only not worry about that but
I as a user of the resource would prefer "undoctored" copies. The only
disadvantage is that scanned pdf files can be fairly large.  I would solve
that by making them available in zipped format.

Hope this helped.
Reinhard/Ron

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