Re: [ba-unrev-talk] Re: International Purple Numbering Standard?
On Friday 04 October 2002 09:59, Matthew Schneider wrote:
> Would these two sources necessarily need to exhibit the same semantically
> defined Purple number? (01)
I think what I meant to say was: Would these two sources need to exhibit
Purple numbers that where identically defined? (02)
Corrected copy below. (03)
Matt (04)
---- corrected copy ---- (05)
Do we need a standard for Purple numbers? (06)
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 (07)
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. (08)
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). (09)
Jumping back to the digital world: Would these two sources need to exhibit
Purple numbers that where identically defined? 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). (010)
There are other uses for Purple numbers certainly. 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. (011)
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. (012)
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? (013)
I believe I have solved this problem and will disclose details shortly. (014)
Best regards, (015)
Matthew A. Schneider (016)