The Future of the Document

1
The Future of the Document

• Paper is OUT
• Trees are IN
• UVic Humanities Computing and Media Centre

2
The traditional document

• Authored once
• Static
• Single presentation medium
• Cockups embarrassingly persistent
• Terrible waste of resources

3
The modern document

• Centrally stored
• Easily updated
• Includes meta-data
• Dynamic display
• Often collaborative
• Machine readable
• Example a Curriculum Vitae

4
The meta-data

• Dublin Core elements include
• Title, Subject, Description
• Creator(s), Contributor(s), Publisher(s)
• Type, Format, Language, Source
• Identifier(s) (e.g. ISBN, URI, etc.)
• Rights

5
Content is marked up semantically, not visually.

• For example
• Traditional HTML or word-processor version
• "...the ltboldgtimportantlt/boldgt thing..."
• Semantic version
• "...the ltemphasizedgtimportantlt/emphasizedgt
  thing..."
• Or
• The US "election" gt The US ltironicgtelectionlt/iron
  icgt

6
Content is structured in tree format

• Trees are easily parsed, read and rendered
• Trees are easily searched and indexed
• Trees are easily condensed, combined,
  restructured, or repurposed

7
How to do this XML

• XML is eXtensible Markup Language
• It has ltkeywordgttagslt/keywordgt like HTML
• You can create your own tags
• Example an Old English text

8
How do I create an XML document?

• Type it in a text editor
• Use WordPerfect 9
• Use a dedicated tool such as XMetaL
• Bear in mind, though, that this is both
  intellectually and mechanically complex. It's
  hard (but it's worth it).

9
What can I do with my XML document?

• Use stylesheets to display it
• Use a script language to
• transform it
• harvest from it
• search it
• render it for your publisher
• Store it in an online database

10
If you're starting a project...

• ...DON'T just make a word-processor document
• ...DO think about using XML
• ...DO come and talk to us
• Make your document as sophisticated and durable
  as the ideas inside it.

11
A final note on characters

• We used to have 256 characters
• We used to have to
• handle special characters using special fonts
• distribute our special fonts
• embed our special fonts
• rely on our special fonts

12
Now we have Unicode

• 65,000 characters
• Every major language, all in one font
• Never worry about fonts again
• Unicode-capable
• Office 2000
• Windows 2000
• Mac OS X
• Internet Explorer 5 and Netscape 6
• Managing the transition

13
Website for this presentation

• http//web.uvic.ca/hrd/futuredoc/