Upload
chester-bishop
View
213
Download
1
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Cocoon and Digital Libraries in the Humanities
Hugh A. CaylessUNC Chapel Hill
outline
• What is Apache Cocoon?• Why is it particularly useful for
digital library applications in the Humanities?
• Getting started with Cocoon• Some examples
– A Cocoon webapp– Integrating software into Cocoon
What is Apache Cocoon?
•An XML-based (web) publishing framework written in Java
•Some explanatory digressions:– XML– XSLT– SAX
Digressions continued…
•Wimmel, Walter (1960) Kallimachos in Rom, Wiesbaden.
or•Galinsky, Karl (1969) "The
Triumph Theme in the Augustan Elegy," Wiener Studien 82, 75-107.
Digressions continued…
• <p>Wimmel, Walter (1960) <i>Kallimachos in Rom</i>, Wiesbaden.</p>
• <bibl> <title lang="deu">Kallimachos in Rom</title> <author> <persName> <foreName>Walter</foreName> <surName>Wimmel</surName> </persName> </author> <date>1960</date> <pubPlace>Wiesbaden</pubPlace></bibl>
What is Apache Cocoon?
•Some explanatory digressions:– XML
•(e)X(tensible) M(arkup) L(anguage)
– XSLT•(e)X(tensible) S(tylesheet) L(anguage)
T(ransformations)
– SAX• S(imple) A(PI) (for) X(ML)
Cocoon continued…
•More explanations:– Pipeline-based processing
•Generators•Transformers•Serializers•Readers
– The Sitemap• http://localhost:8080/cocoon/mystuff/
mypage.html
Cocoon continued…
•Separation of Concerns
SoC
•How does this help?– Focus on establishing contracts,
rather than training.– Scholars don’t have to radically
change the way they do things.– Programmers don’t have to create
systems from scratch.
Humanities Digital Libraries
•Characteristics– Often focused on documents– Multiple languages– Integration of images with texts
desired– Integration of analytical tools– Good search and retrieval tools
Humanities Digital Libraries
•Obstacles– Time– Money– Unfamiliarity of content providers
with technology– Unfamiliarity of technologists with
content
Cocoon’s Solutions
•Time– Reduces the amount of time spent in
negotiations between scholars and programmers
– Reduces the actual amount of code that needs to be written.
Cocoon’s Solutions
•Money– It’s free– It can run in a servlet container
that’s also free– It can run on a software platform
that’s free
Cocoon’s Solutions
•Content providers– Only have to learn enough
technology to provide the content with sufficient data and metadata.
Cocoon’s Solutions
• technologists– Can focus on solving specific
problems posed by the material, e.g. writing code to analyze content.
Getting Started
• Downloads:– http://java.sun.com
http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat– http://xml.apache.org/cocoon
• Installation:– Install Java– Install Tomcat– Put cocoon.war in tomcat/webapps/– Start Tomcat
Getting started
• Documentation– Online documentation much improved– Very active user / development
community
• Books– Cocoon: Building XML Applications, Matthew
Langham and Carsten Zeigler, New Riders, 2003.
– Cocoon Developer’s Handbook, Lajos Moczar and Jeremy Aston, Developer’s Library, 2003.
Some Examples
•A cocoon web application:– EpiDocinator
• Integrating software– Transcoder– CHET-C-java