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From:	 USER <ahg@servidor.unam.mx>
To:	 
Subject: Mexican Revolution archive XML-RDF help wanted!!
Date:	 Thu, 17 May 2001 01:10:29 -0500

(apologies for cross-posting)

Hi,

I'd like to invite folks to check out a proposal for a new open-source
XML project:

DURITO, a flexible XML- and RDF-based framework for publishing and
searching within documents in Web and CD-ROM environments.

The general idea is to try to create a new Semantic Web / open-source
software option for text-based research (especially) in the humanities
and social sciences.  I should emphasize that the program will be
written in Perl.

The design proposal is explained at: http://durito.sourceforge.net

Any comments would be extremely welcome!  As would participations of any
kind!

The first implementation of Durito will be a Win32 (and hopefully Linux)
CD-ROM edition of oral testimonies on the Mexican Revolution.  The
testimonies were collected in the 1970's and were recently digitized.
The CD-ROM (or series of CD-ROMs) will contain texts (transcriptions) in
TEI - XML and audio in MP3 or OGG.  We have over 200 hours of sound
recordings of interviews, though the first version of the publication
will contain much less than that.  We hope to set this up so as to
easily be able to create an Internet version of the collection as well.

Many areas come together in Durito: semantic markup; multimedia, audio
compression and streaming; techniques for making searches within text
archives more effective; intelligent metadata management; ways of making
applications portable between network and local environments.

The design proposal on the web site is pretty sweeping and surely
evidences my newness to many of the areas involved.  Again, we’re
looking not only for comments and suggestions, but also for people who
would like to actively participate in Durito’s development.

Many thanks in advance,

Andrew Green
ahg at servidor.unam.mx
andrew_g11 at users.sourceforge.net
flimjmi at yahoo.co.uk
(substitute 'at' for @)

P.S. Axkit (which I just discovered) seems to provide some of the
functionality that we're proposing for Durito, minus the RDF component,
the CR-ROM environment option, the search features, and the
synchronizing of text and audio.  Axkit also seems to implement all
sorts of stuff that I hadn't realized would be important for web-based
XML publishing.  Perhaps the two projects, or elements of the two
projects, could be integrated in some way.