Overview:
1. Literary XML
The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C-recommended general-purpose markup language that supports a wide variety of applications. XML languages or 'dialects' may be designed by anyone and my be processed by conforming software. XML is also designed to be reasonably human-legible, and to this end, terseness was not considered esseintial in its structure. XML is a simplified subset of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). Its primary purpose is to facilitate the sharing of data across different information systems, particularly systems connected via the Internet. (Wikipedia)
Application to literature?
Piers Plowman (w. ca. 1360–1399) is the title of a Middle English allegorical narrative by William Langland. It is written in unrhymed alliterative verse divided into sections called "passus" (Latin for "steps"). Piers is considered by many critics one of the early great works of English literature along with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
Digital media observation
There exist some forms of writing that resist an industrial/digital form of reduction. These writings express semantics by their form/placement/style, etc.
Scribal culture resists digitization.
2. Online journals
Conclusion: Template too complex
2a. Digital writing = Interactive documents
What happens to template strategy when digital writing includes a dynamic document?
<body onload="setPage()">
<!-- Fade in examples -->
function setPage(){
YAHOO.util.Dom.setStyle('you', 'opacity', 0.0);
YAHOO.util.Dom.setStyle('WesternCiv', 'opacity', 0.0);
YAHOO.util.Dom.setStyle('faint', 'opacity', 0.5);
var myTooltip = new YAHOO.widget.Tooltip("myTooltip", {
context: "strunk",
text: "Strunk, William, Jr. and White, E.B. The Elements of style",
showDelay: 500 } );
}
<body>
3. Digital Writing and Protocols
Ajax (also known as AJAX), shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a web development technique for creating interactive web applications. The intent is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user requests a change. This is meant to increase the web page's interactivity, speed, and usability.
Example: YUI Yahoo! User Interface Library
Tim Berners-Lee: Reinventing HTML Making standards is hard work ... HTML has the potential interest of millions of people: anyone who has designed a web page may have useful views on new HTML features. It is the earliest spec of W3C, a battleground of the browser wars, and now the most widespreada spec.
The foundational YUI Reset CSS file creates a level playing field across A-grade browsers and provides a sound foundation upon which you can explicitly declare your intentions. It normalizes the default rendering of all HTML elements, for example it sets margin, padding, and border to 0, font sizes to YUI Font's default, italic and bold styles to normal, and list-style to none.
Is the Internet a vast arena of unrestricted communication and freely exchanged information or a regulated, highly structured virtual bureaucracy? In Protocol Alexander Galloway argues that the founding principle of the Net is control, not freedom, and that the controlling power lies in the technical protocols that make network connections (and disconnections) possible... Galloway begins by examining the types of protocols that exist, including TCP/IP, DNS, and HTML. He then looks at examples of resistance and subversion -- hackers, viruses, cyberfeminism, Internet art -- which he views as emblematic of the larger transformations now taking place within digital culture.
Yahoo - the new subversive?
Digital culture works when we first smash the protocols?