Subject: tc-list What happened to ENTMP

From: Timothy John Finney <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 17:59:31 +0800 (WST)

Jim West wrote:

> I feel somewhat guilty that I stopped
> transcribing- but I did not feel like doing it if the materials were not
> made use of.  Tim- what ever became of those mss transcriptions?

You think _you_ feel guilty. I hang my head in shame. For those who came
in late, the Electronic New Testament Manuscripts Project was established
early in 1994 when no one had heard of WWW and the only browser was
Mosaic. James Tauber set up the ENTMP site and we began discussions on a
grand plan to make images and transcriptions available by a cooperative
web-based effort. Unfortunately, James and I have always been too busy
doing other things to make it work. We are both keen to make the site into
something useful one day. The fact that we have not done so yet is a cause
for shame on my part. (By the way, I think that the transcriptions by
David Washburn and Jim West are still in James' computer.)

I am glad that people have started to talk about the topic of
transcriptions again. Patrick Durusau made what I think are some very
useful remarks the other day. XML holds great promise for the markup of
all kinds of things, not least for New Testament manuscripts. Whether or
not XML becomes the markup method of choice, we in the field still need to
establish a transcription standard for NT MSS.

Patrick mentioned one project to establish such standards. I have a
suggestion that might help to get the ball rolling. Perhaps we could put a
manuscript image at some agreed place then use this forum to discuss how
to transcribe it. (I have some nice manuscript images that I obtained for
just such a purpose with the blessing of the custodians. Of course, Jimmy
Adair would have to agree to us using this list as the forum.) 

Not everyone knows about XML (including me). But that should not stop 
us from saying what kinds of things to focus on. Once we have some
basic agreement on what a transcription should include, how it can
be made future-proof, etc, we can hammer out a transcription that
everyone is happy to live with, at least for now.

It's all about achieving a standard approach. Without such an approach, we
will continue to go nowhere. With such an approach, you can expect to see
a rapid growth in the number of electronic manuscript transcriptions and a
corresponding growth in the kind of knowledge that comes from analysing
such transcriptions.

Tim Finney

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From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 09:11:08 -0500

On 7/30/99, Timothy John Finney wrote, in part:

>Not everyone knows about XML (including me).

We should perhaps note that it's a very wide-open format. It's at
once a superset of HTML and a customized subset of SGML -- but it is much
closer to SGML. Translation for ordinary folks: It is very, very
complex. It allows almost anything you want in the way of formatting,
but it has so many bells and whistles that a single result can be
achieved in many ways.

I strongly suspect, when we start seeing XML programs, that their
XML will *not* be mutually compatible; they will actually implement
subsets, and the subsets won't be the same.

So I would have to say that we shouldn't pin our hopes on particular
features of XML. If we can manage compatibility with its standards,
great -- but I wouldn't start transcribing stuff in it yet.

>But that should not stop 

This I absolutely agree with. But I would argue that the first
step is to decide what information we need in a collation. Only
once that is done can we implement a format.

And chances are, as we implement the format, we'll wind up making
a few corrections. :-) 

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

                        Robert B. Waltz
                     [email-masked]

Want more loudmouthed opinions about textual criticism?
Try my web page: http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn
(A site inspired by the Encyclopedia of NT Textual Criticism)

---

From: "Dave Washburn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 10:36:59 -0700

Tim,
> David Washburn and Jim West are still in James' computer.)

I still have the ones I did; Jim, do you still have copies of yours?  I 
still have the printed edition of P75 (Luke) that you sent me, and to 
my own shame I haven't touched it in a year.  In any case, if we 
can agree to a place to put them, I can make what I have available 
again.  

A related question: the original ENTMP site had to use a login 
process to give access to the images, as I recall because of 
something to do with copyright.  I'd like to know more about that, 
because I also have most of the images I worked from, and as long 
as it's not stepping on somebody's toes I could probably post 
those, too.

> Adair would have to agree to us using this list as the forum.) 

Are those the ones that were on the original ENTMP?  I may have 
some of those around here...I had 0166, 071, I think P22 and 
perhaps one other, I don't remember which.  I'll have to search my 
computer and my daughter's and see if I can locate them.

> corresponding growth in the kind of knowledge that comes from analysing

Agreed.  I like Wieland's idea of going with ASCII (and I will push 
again for CCAT mapping) to begin with, that way anybody who 
wants to can take them and do the markup.  If we do the bare 
transcriptions in a fairly unencumbered format, markup becomes a 
matter of retrofitting which should be easier.  At least I found it to 
be so when I was doing the SGML stuff with JT.

Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
A Bible that's falling apart means a life that isn't.