XML & Annotation – LaTeX Ninja'ing and the Digital Humanities

26. January 202027. January 2020

What are ‘real’ Digital Humanities and how to get started?

The title suggests a political discussion, however, this is not what I want to discuss here. (However, I had a ‘more political’ discussion planned for a while.) At a recent conference, I realized many people from the Humanities find it difficult to grasp what the DH even really are – because they are so diverse. I was told a colleague had gone to a short DH summer school but still feels like she doesn’t get what the DH really are. Or that she hasn’t learned any ‘real DH’. How does this happen? How can we make it better? Maybe, as a first step, by trying to answer what the DH are in a way which is easy to grasp for someone who isn’t already part of the DH: It is really an umbrella term for a wide range of topics ranging from digital edition to long-term archiving, digitizing facsimile scans of books or running analyses. I don’t promise to unveil

Read more

beginner friendly, DH demystified for non-DH, DH tools and techniques, Digital Humanities, Learn DH Crash Course, Productivity, Tech/IT 101, Tutorials, XML & Annotation 2 Comments

24. November 20191. December 2019

Automating XML annotation: Get more done using RegEx Search&Replace and xsl:analyze-string

Annotation is a fundamental part of the DH. But often, us DH people don’t actually do the annotation. We do

24. April 201925. April 2019

Should I start doing DH?

My non-DH colleagues and friends ask me more and more often if I think they should start doing Digital Humanities and if yes, where to start? Since this seems to be an interesting topic for many, I thought I’d quickly elaborate on it. Disclaimer: Even though I’ll put on my “career advisor” hat right now, I want to remind you that I am in no way qualified to advise you on your career. So if it all goes downwards from now, I am not the one to blame. All opinions are my own and should be treated as such. So, now we got the legal part over with (essentially: don’t sue me), let’s get to my opinion on the topic. I think it is out of the question whether you should start doing DH. In my prognosis, almost all Humanities research is going to be at least part DH in the near future. If you ask me. And you did.

Simple XML to LaTeX Transformation Tutorial

Today, I wanted to share this super simple XML to LaTeX tutorial. Using XSLT, you are going to transform XML data to LaTeX output which you can then go on to compile into your desired output PDF. There will be no fancy stuff whatsoever in this post, just the basics and what to keep in mind with these transformations. It is the quick intro to XML to LaTeX I did with my students a while ago which was done one day after they had their first contact with XSLT, so it should really be beginner-friendly. I labeled it “Advanced LaTeX” anyway because I think starting to automate things is always a step in the right direction 😉 Configuring the transformation scenario in Oxygen I am going to assume you use Oxygen now because that’s what a lot of people in the DH do and this post is directed towards my friends in the DH. Especially those who think print editions