----- Original Message -----
From: "Farris G. Wahbeh" <[log in to unmask]>
> Let me know if anyone on the list is familiar with this
> application: its merits or its possible faults.
> Conversely, is there a general danger of using EAD
> without recommended stylesheets? Once the information
> is encoded using EAD guidelines, can the information be
> uploaded on the web regardless of style or layout?
Just to clarify: Ruby on Rails is a development environment for the Ruby
programming language. It has a lot of built-in features that help a
programmer quickly and easily develop a database-driven web application, but
it isn't a database or a web delivery application in and of itself. You can
certainly write something that will deliver finding aids using Ruby and Ruby
on Rails, just as you could write something using Perl or Java or Python or
any other programming language with an associated development environment.
So I don't think it much matters whether your contractor uses Ruby or
something else. (The only problem might be if you later switch to another
contractor for modification or support -- I think Ruby isn't as well-known
in the programming world as C++ or some other languages.)
Re your question about delivering without style sheets - If the finding aid
looked nice, then it's almost certain that styles in fact are being applied
somewhere. My guess would be that it's happening as your contractor's
application constructs an HTML page to send out to someone's browser, either
through the use of different formatting (bold, etc) for different database
objects, or possibly by applying an XSLT style sheet to the EAD document
itself to render it into HTML.
Regardless, as long as it looks nice and functions properly, I don't think
there's any reason you can't do it however you want. The important part for
standardization purposes is the source EAD document; what you do with that
document is entirely up to you :)
Michele
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