On Dec 15, 2004, at 1:38 PM, Eric Lease Morgan wrote:

>> As far as data entry, if your maintenance front-end is web based (as I
>> assume from "CGI forms"), what about using http upload (input
>> type="file")?
>
> Actually, the implementation you suggest was the path I was
> considering. Unfortunately, this means leaving some sort of text lying
> around on my file system for importing. Similarly, it poses the
> problem of editing; in order to edit data in such an implementation I
> will need to export the big chunk, edit, and re-import. That is sort
> of klunky, but still it is what I was considering.

I have implemented the idea above, and you can begin to see the fruits
of my labors here:

   http://infomotions.com/alex2/home.cgi

I desire to markup novel-sized texts in TEI. I'm lazy and I don't feel
like doing the whole thing in my editor. So I wrote a form that accepts
input for the texts' metadata. The form also includes a place for URL.
In my administrative interface, when  I click edit, my script retrieves
the content at the other end of the URL, saves the data locally, and I
edit it there. When I'm done editing, the text gets sucked back into
the database.

Now that the content as well as the metadata are saved in the database,
I "build" a TEI file. From there I transform the TEI file into many
ebook flavors. I then index the content to provide a search interface.

So far the system works well, but still, the mark-up process is time
consuming. Can you say, "Labor of love?"

--
Eric Lease Morgan