INLS
180 Day 16 Notes
Midterm
project discussion
On grading: 3
points per section, 1 point for overall presentation. Questions I
put on your papers are often rhetorical—to cause you to think further. I asked some of you to raise questions/issues
in class discussion (if we don’t get to them first)
Some general observations
a) The bottom up approach to learning (reverse
engineering).
b) Distinguish classification (creating bins)and
cataloging (using bins)
c) Semantic versus syntactic markup (most did syntactic
for books, semantic for TV)
d) The role of hierarchy in structure
e) The role of expectations in how we do these tasks
(perhaps indicated by the variance in approaches for the different assignments)
Some notes on markup.
Three levels:
Metalanguage: SGML
presents a grammar for markup schemes
DTD
(and schemes): a language for a type of
object (e.g., TEI, DDI)
Instance: the markup for a specific object (e.g., a
book)
Stylesheets: separate treatments of display options
1. Books
Consider generic tags that work for many books
in a genre versus tags specific to a particular book.
If you were given the tagged structure of a book
without any content, could you guess its genre?
What if we showed the size (e.g., number of words) of
every tagged chunk, would this help in guessing genre? Would it help in other ways?
What if you were given the ‘shape’ of the text? Could we index/retrieve by structure/shape?
Could you imagine a set of structure indexes? (e.g., an index for typographic forms, others for space, time,
people, events, themes, etc.)
How might these help in understanding (beyond search)
2. Video
Most people used semantic structuring rather
than syntactic
Few people considered audio. How might you tag the synchronous
channels? Of those who did, most created
special hybrid tags (e.g., visual shot with talk, visual shot with music, etc.)
What does the length of a shot mean? Is it a surrogate
for relevance?
Consider not only the length of a shot, but how these
lengths vary across the entire segment (e.g., patterns in the shot lengths to
affect gist,response). Are there staccato and euphonious ‘phases’?
Also, what goes on in a shot adds to the frenetic or
calming effects.
How to handle forward references (e.g., news to come
when we return, previews for next week's sitcom or drama, etc.). How might these be tagged? How do hyperlinks
work in video?
3. Websites
My estimation is that some of you are visual
dominants and some text dominants and this influenced your assessments. What draws your eye? (motion,
size, color, shape)
The ‘sectors’ could be ‘wireframes’
for the underlying information architecture on a page
Should visual links (either text or icon) be repeated
on page?
If there are lots of links, how are they ordered or
clustered?
Are genre-specific styles emerging (e.g., university
sites all give audience
options)?
Search sites
Depth of indexing in Yahoo (e.g., art)
Default search terms controversial
Portal versus search, directory
versus analytical search, ads, special services/personalizations. Advertising and business model
Interaction(s): forms (fill in), menus, mouseovers, animations
Several of you tried reloads, different browsers, did
controlled queries, greped for HTTP to count links,
etc. to get more in-depth views of the pages.
What is the purpose of a website? Generate
interest? Provide information? Sell products? Entertain?
Do you want to be entertained by your bank?
What is good design?
What is good architecture?
4. Comparisons across media
What does structure tell us about meaning? Does this vary by medium?
Where are the opportunities?
3.Reading discussion: Reeves & Nass
[Jenks-Brown]
4. One-minute paper
concept
What was the big point you
learned in class today?
What is the main, unanswered
question you leave class with today?