Subject: Re: Electronic Texts?

From: Klaus Wachtel <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 01 Oct 1997 13:40:09 +0000

Vincent Broman wrote:
> me:
> >> The IfNTTF in Muenster evidently has substantial files of
> >> that sort, but they treat them as commercially valuable secrets.

That's nothing but rumor.

>
> [email-masked]:
> > Where did you get this information from?
>
> The existence of the files is discussed in Aland's "Text of the NT" and
> in articles written by Muensteraner such as Gerd Mink, and it is demonstrated
> for sample points of variation by the printouts in "Text und Textwert"
> and for complete texts of the Epistle of James by the first installment
> of the editio critica maior.

The files and programms Aland refers to on pp.270sq in TNT were on a
mainframe computer at the Computer Center of Muenster University which
recently was replaced by a new one. Believe it or not: the programms 
which generated those files don't run on the new computer. So not even 
members of the INTF have access to those electronic treasures anymore, 
- the price of progress.

The Mark volume of "Text and Textwert" we are currently preparing for
printing and the first installment of the ECM are in formats that can 
in principle be made available online. But the INTF hasn't even got a 
homepage yet. I know that rumor also has it that we have infinite 
resources of funding and manpower, but in fact there is noone at the 
institute who has the time _and_ the knowledge to publish the results 
of our work online. I'm sure that we will sooner or later, but before 
that a lot of problems have to be solved, among them the problem of 
copyright which normally is not the institute's once a work is 
published.
  
>
> The motivation ascribed to them is my own conjecture, based on the observations
> that those guys avoided answering direct questions about access to the files,
> that late in 1997 no public electronic access to the files is provided,
> despite obvious public interest, and on my own projected image of
> sponsors not wanting to sow the effort of keyboarding without reaping the
> expected harvest of publications (ahead of the competition).

Who of us guys did you contact, Vincent?

Klaus Wachtel, INTF

---

From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 Oct 1997 08:16:36 -0500 (CDT)

On Wed, 01 Oct 1997, Klaus Wachtel <[email-masked]> wrote,
in part:

[ ... ]

>members of the INTF have access to those electronic treasures anymore, 

It's no surprise that the programs won't run. Very few mainframes
can run each others' software without modification.

On the other hand, it should not be hard to "port" the software.
I've written similar software that, with a couple of changes
that are documented in the software itself, should run on any
IBM PC, Macintosh, or UNIX machine that has a Pascal compiler.
Or that can easily be converted to C. (I should have written
it in C, but it's difficult to run generic C on a Macintosh....)
What's more, the software is quite fast; on my slow machine,
with no code optimization, it can check 900 readings in
50 manuscripts (or 50 readings in 900 manuscripts) in about
two minutes.

If someone wants to send me the source code and data files,
(not likely, I realize...), I would be happy to look at it.
I suspect conversion to a form that will run on personal computers
would not be difficult. And if I'm right, I would even be
willing to do the conversion.

Bob Waltz
[email-masked]

"The one thing we learn from history --
   is that no one ever learns from history."

---

From: Vincent Broman <[email-masked]>
Date: 1 Oct 1997 23:23:11 -0000

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

[email-masked] said:
>                  Believe it or not: the programms 

I am flabbergasted.  The magnitude of such a pratfall can scarcely be believed.
After investing the effort to collate and keyboard, the data is just discarded?
Did no one keep a backup tape?  Can't the programs (the source code)
be compiled on another machine?  If you still have the data somewhere,
_I_ could port the software, for heaven's sake.

> But the INTF hasn't even got a homepage yet.

The http://www.uni-muenster.de/EvangelischeTheologie/Seminare.HTML#NTF
was not too hard to find.  I just checked and ftp://ftp.uni-muenster.de
and http://www.uni-muenster.de both appeared fully functional to me.

>                                          there is noone at the 
> of our work online.

Perhaps people have inflated ideas of the effort required.
All you have to do is copy some files to some directory accessible
by an FTP server, announce the location to some people,
and you're published.  The ENTMP (or I personally) can provide
technical expertise on making things comprehensible or usable.

> a lot of problems have to be solved, among them the problem of 
> copyright

What many people are interested in is MS transcriptions or collations.
An ancient MS text cannot be copyrighted.  What you copyright
when you publish something like Text und Textwert is your original
arrangement of the data, with your original analysis and commentary.
Software used is generally not published with the book, so
you never sell the rights to that.  Besides, you can produce
whatever kind of reports or dumps of the TuT data that you want, oder?

> Who of us guys did you contact, Vincent?

My memory is cloudy, but I wrote to Aland a couple of times and got
one response from a Mitarbeiter delegated to write back.

Vincent Broman         Email: [email-masked],[email-masked]     =   o     
2224 33d St.             Phone: +1 619 284 3775                    =  _ /- _   
San Diego, CA  92104-5605  Starship: 32d42m22s N 117d14m13s W     =  (_)> (_)  
___ PGP protected mail preferred.  For public key finger [email-masked] ___

---

From: Klaus Wachtel <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Oct 1997 17:47:17 +0000

Vincent Broman wrote:
> Did no one keep a backup tape? 

Don't worry, Vincent, the files still exist. But what do you expect them 
to contain? Full collations? "Text und Textwert" is designed for 
determining the manuscripts which should be collated in full. 

> Can't the programs (the source code)
> be compiled on another machine?  

Probably this is possible, but we didn't care for it so far, because the 
files served their purpose: Those volumes of "Text and Textwert" (Catholic 
Letters, Pauline Letters, Acts) are published, although only on paper, and 
we learned or will learn from them, which manuscripts to select for full 
collation.

>If you still have the data somewhere,

Thanks for the offer, I'll think about that.

> and http://www.uni-muenster.de both appeared fully functional to me.
 
I wouldn't call our address a homepage. 

> technical expertise on making things comprehensible or usable.

Thank you, but I think you overestimate the technical aspect of 
publishing. Texts have to be written, information has to be kept up to 
date, comments and questions have to be answered. And I think, not many 
would be happy with databases published as a mere matrices. So programs 
have to be written which enable people to search them.

> What you copyright

Partly right, although publishers, in case of TuT deGruyter, may be of a 
different opinion in this respect.

Klaus Wachtel, INTF

---

From: Vincent Broman <[email-masked]>
Date: 3 Oct 1997 16:17:01 -0000

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

[email-masked] wrote: 
> the files served their purpose: ...

Their only purpose?  The initial crude analysis printed in T.u.T. is
a start, but a satisfactory profile analysis and MS classification effort
will need to revisit that data in an electronic form, because the dead-tree
edition is poorly suited for large-scale processing.

>                                                       not many 

Programs exist.  Programs can be written by others.  E.g. ego.
The collation and keyboarding needed to obtain the matrices is the hard part.
(Well, thinking clearly about what to do with them is the other hard part,
but that doesn't require as much time/money.)

The T.u.T. collations, even if only samples, are important achievements
of the Institute, but I have a hard time time imagining that no one has
transcribed/collated e.g. the sinaitic syriac, P46, or Vaticanus completely.
The obstacle to the eventual public release of the machine-readable _data_
underlying the T.u.T., the NA26/27, the UBS3/4, the SQE, the syriac NT
materials, the Kurzgefasste Liste, etc. is mainly their status as
income-producing property, not the minor technical problems in copying files
to a server.

Vincent Broman                                       San Diego, California, USA
Email: broman at sd.znet.com (home)       or spawar.navy.mil or nosc.mil (work)
Phone: +1 619 284 3775                       Starship: 32d42m22s N 117d14m13s W
=== PGP protected mail preferred.   For public key finger me at np.nosc.mil ===

---

From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 12:12:19 -0500 (CDT)

>edition is poorly suited for large-scale processing.

Or even large-scale use. Try, just try, to find the closest relative
of, say, 1611 across the entire Pauline corpus. You'll have to look
through a dozen or so lists, and you can't even look at just the first
two or three items in the lists, because they'll all be fragments....

>but that doesn't require as much time/money.)

I can confirm this from personal observation. I have databases of my
own, and have written various programs to interpret them. I have
massively rewritten those programs at least four times now. Even so,
I have spent roughly five times as long entering the data as I have
spent writing the code.

And that's when using someone else's collations. If I'd had to collate
the data myself, I'd still be working on it....

>income-producing property, not the minor technical problems in copying files

I can understand using the information to generate revenue. I don't
*like* it, but I realize that checking all those manuscripts was a
very large job. But I have to agree with Vincent Broman: The information
ought to be available electronically. If the Institute staff doesn't
want to give it away, *sell* it. That way we can get the information
we need, and no trees wasted. :-)

Bob Waltz
[email-masked]