Dear Ead List,

An aside from a quiet, of late, lurker:

Apart from the resource question with 'full' sgml encoded finding aids,
which may be solved with improved authoring tools or a more user friendly
standard, say xgml, etc., the other problem with the project is simply the
inability of current carrier networks to move that amount of data at
reasonable times.  That is that, apart from actually making Panorama work on
less than state of the art machines (that can be difficult, but I for one
finally got it working on a 486 running windows 3.x) the network as a whole
[and from what I understand even the high speed networks around
universities] just cannot carry the size files involved at present.  If full
sgml becomes the standard, then everyone will be going to full sgml in time
and the traffic will be just as congested despite current moves towards
partial upgrades.

Just a thought in the current discussion,

yours




At 07:54 PM 14/06/97 +0000, you wrote:
>     On the issue of realism and the idea that SoftQuad should be able to
>make a reasonable return on their investments:
>
>
>      I don't like beating up on SoftQuad and if it seems as if I have in my
>past comments I regret that impression.  Yale has been engaged in serious
>discussions to purchase many copies of Panorama Publisher and something akin
>to a site license for Panorama Viewer to install on workstations throughout
>the campus.  I don't expect Soft Quad to give away a product that is as
>powerful and Panorama Publisher.  I AM, however, concerned with the issue of
>whether SGML is going to become a "relatively" easy to use format for
>individual scholars for whom we want to provide remote access.  We made a
>decision to become an early (and aggressive) implementor of EAD because we
>wanted to go beyond the limitations of gopher based access to ASCII text
>files of our finding aids.  We did so because we believed that by late 1997
>most scholars would have access to WWW enabled mini-computers with browers
>such as Netscape, Explorer, and Mosaic to which an SGML VIEWER could be easily
>and inexpensively added.  I assumed (perhaps naively) that the committment to
>Panorama Free that marked SoftQuad's entrance into the WWW world was a
>harbinger of plug-in and helper apps that would - in the model of Quick
>Time, Real
>Audio, and Acrobat Reader - be given away in order to promote the sale and
>use of
>server end tools (such as Panorama Publisher and Author Editor to mention
>two such
>products).  I continue to believe that SGML offers enhanced navigational
>tools that go far beyond HTML frames....[edit]
>
>George Miles
>
>
Leigh Swancott
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