Images in the data file

[John Halleck]

On Fri, 12 Jan 2001, Garry Petrie wrote:

> Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 00:04:51 -0800
> From: Garry Petrie <gp@europa.com>
> To: cave-surveying@survex.com
> Subject: Re: Cave-Surveying digest, Vol 1 #23 - 4 msgs
> 
>  > On Thu, 11 Jan 2001, Julian Todd wrote:
> 
>  > > [...]
>  > > This text (in the CDATA[]), being a faithful representation of your notes
>  > > from the cave, will not change unless there has been a transcription
>  > > error or other blunder.  After you have run your Survex parser and
>  > > extracted the data into XML notation you could delete it and
>  > > carry on without it.
> 
>  >  Keeping a clean unmodified original text, and letting programs produce
>  >  the result of the parse, instead of trying to mark up the original line
>  >  with what it was identified with was a great help when it came to things
>  >  like proofreading back in my LBCC days.  It also meant that errant programs
>  >  were more likely to add their mangled markup in the stuff they dealt with
>  >  than they were to mangle the lines of the original.
>  >  (Of course, back then the idea of storing an image of the page was totally
>  >   out of the question.)
> 
> I can not imagine anything more absurd to do, transcribe your survey notes, run it through 
> a filter to produce XML and then include the original source in the results. What would 
> you do if you had more notes to transcribe?

  They went on the end.  And what they generate goes after that.
  Having the original unprocessed data there saved us many times because
  we could reprocess whatever part caused the problem without going
  back and reprocessing from scratch.  Having yet another more original
  source there is, in my opinion, even better.  

> Is not your primitive text editor just a step 
> of your "surveying software solution?"

  Obviously, there is something that takes the text file and adds the text
  to the "real" file, marked as originals, and marked as needing processing.
  (Just as something has to put those images in the file, appropriately marked.)

> People say XML is good because it is human 
> readable. That is bunk, those bits on your hard disk are not human readable.

  True enough.   But they are bits in a form that everyone already has tools
  that allow them to read.  (Namely any text editor.)
 
> The only true record is your original survey notes, don't misplace them.

  I'm certainly not suggesting that this means we don't have to archive.
  (And I doubt that the original poster is claiming this either.)
  It is just another way to keep information in the file to aid locating
  problems.

> I do trust technology enough to preserve digital images.
> Scan your notes and place the files on a CD 
> not stored at your house. That's what I do. Enough said, box off.

  But (as I understood the original post) the idea was to take those scanned
  in images, and also put them in the data file.  You can now put that
  file on your CD and you have the entrie process from image to map in 
  one place.

> Back to XML. I gather that XPointers are a way to reference files. Our markup language 
> needs a way to reference external files, e.g. images.

  And, even though I don't plan to use them, it would be nice to have a way to
  put the images in the file directly.

> Garry Petrie

-- John Halleck