VMs: Re: Numbered transcription

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi GC,

>  is this page something like what you had in mind?
>
> www.voynich.info/vgbt/f1v.pdf

Ouch - my version of Acrobat Reader (3.0) throws up an error on this page: 
It says:-

        There was an error processing a page. A font contains a bad CMap 
/Encoding.

                                [       OK       ]

I guess I should probably upgrade to 5.0... oh, the agonies of continual 
upgrading... :-(

All the same, I could (briefly) see the first line, and, yes, that's 
exactly what I had in mind. :-)

Also: I should say that was more thinking more in terms of HTML 
(specifically DHTML) than pdf's. It should be easy to devise a way for 
JavaScript to generate (and display) the line/word numbers automatically 
for a given lump of text. Using two CSS styles (one for text, one for 
numbering) would also be a sensible use of modern HTML. :-)

But for what you're trying to do, I think it would make an *awful* lot of 
sense to use XML, as John Grove suggested last summer.

For the uninitiated, an XML version of a VMS transcription might well look 
something like this:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='windows-1252' standalone='yes'?>
<VMS>
        <page name='f0r' hand='A' section='astro'>
                <url>http://www.voynich.info/images/f0r.jpg</url>
                <line name='X.01'>
                        <word>qoteedy</word>
                        <word>dain</word>
                        <word>daiin</word>
                        <word>daiiin</word>
                </line>
        </page>
</VMS>

What you would see in your browser (or XML editor) would be a structured & 
fontified view of that, with perhaps line/word numbers added to it, etc.

Sure, compared to the existing set of transcriptions XML is "flabby" - but 
for what you're trying to do - a more broadly collaborative glyph-based 
transcription exercise - I think there would be quite a few benefits.

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....