[ba-unrev-talk] Re: International Purple Numbering Standard?
On Thursday 03 October 2002 16:26, Peter Jones wrote:
>
> How about we develop an International Standard/Guidelines for Purple
> Numbering? (01)
---- this is my (M.S) thinking out loud --- (02)
Do we need a standard for Purple numbers? (03)
hyperlink
n : a link from a hypertext file to another location or file;
typically activated by clicking on a highlighted word or
icon at a particular location on the screen (04)
If I am writing a report about Shakespeare and in my bibliography reference a
particular passage from "Romeo and Juliet", does it matter where the source
that I link to reside? No, ultimately, so long as the source is accurate.
There might be any number of copies of "Romeo and Juliet" available, anyone
of which will be satisfactory. (05)
So, belaboring this analogy a bit longer, in my day I might have read the
report (on paper) and gone to my library to check the source:
myhometown/mylibrary/bookshelf6/book34/page23/paragraph3 and you similarly
(in another state)
yourhometown/yourlibrary/bookshelf8/book4/page233/paragraph13 (note that I
was reading from a stand alone version of "Romeo and Juliet" while you were
reading from Shakespeare's complete works). (06)
Jumping back to the digital world: Would these two sources necessarily need to
exhibit the same semantically defined Purple number? Or is just getting there
sufficient? I tend to think that just getting there is important (at least in
the limited case I've described). (07)
There are other uses for Purple numbers certainly. But I am under the
impression that GRANULAR ADDRESSABILITY is ultimately what its all about. I
admittedly have coopted that term for my use in PurpleSlurple. My purple
numbers merely designate the line number of the file that I read into an
array before parsing through it - the numbers really mean nothing. BUT they
do provide a means to link to any given paragraph (or line) in the work, AND
(very importantly) the author didn't have to wrestle with semantics of his
composition nor worry about placing markup (in the form of anchors) in the
document. (08)
I think standards offer great utility in many cases. I have not necessarily
concluded that we don't need a standard here, this merely represents some
preliminary thinking. (09)
By the way, another pressing issue intimately related to this matter that
remains unresolved is that of link integrity. i.e., how do we keep the links
to our sources from breaking if we don't control the source? (010)
I believe I have solved this problem and will disclose details shortly. (011)
Best regards, (012)
Matthew A. Schneider (013)