A computational model for MLCD

paper
Authorship
  1. 1. Paul Meurer

    HIT-Centre - University of Bergen

  2. 2. Kjersti Bjørnestad Berg

    Department of Information Science - University of Bergen

Work text
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A computational model for MLCD

Paul
Meurer
HIT-senteret,
University of Bergen
paul.meurer@hit.uib.no

Kjersti
Bjørnestad Berg
Department of Information Science,
University of Bergen
Kjersti.Berg@ifi.uib.no

2002

University of Tübingen

Tübingen

ALLC/ACH 2002

editor

Harald
Fuchs

encoder

Sara
A.
Schmidt

1 Introduction
SGML, and increasingly XML are the prevailing standards for text encoding
today. XML, a simplified subset of SGML, is commonly believed to become the
new standard for web publishing. One of the strengths of SGML/XML is that it
combines a labelled bracketed notation with an intuitive document structure
and a powerful formalism for constraining that structure. All SGML/XML like
systems, however, have problems representing non-hierarchical textual
features, because they require elements to nest. In practice, various
techniques for encoding non- hierarchical features have been developed,
including the use of milestone elements, fragmentation of elements, the SGML
feature CONCUR, and various other techniques for recreating 'virtual
elements' from fragments of the text. The problem with all of these
approaches however, is that they require application- specific logic to
retrieve the intended structure. SGML/XML processors are not sufficient.
MECS is a text encoding system designed by Claus Huitfeldt at the
Wittgenstein Archive in Bergen that was specifically designed to enable
elements to overlap. [3] MECS, on the other hand, has no defined data
structure. The MLCD (Markup Language for Complex Documents) project was
started in February 2001, and is hosted by the Center for Humanities
Information Technology at the University of Bergen. It aims at developing a
text encoding system combining the best of SGML/XML and MECS. This work has
resulted in a notation for a markup meta-language for complex documents,
TexMECS [2], and a data structure for complex documents, GODDAG. This paper
will present the data structure and its implementation.

2 A computational model for MLCD
In [1], Huitfeldt and Sperberg-McQueen describe a data structure for
overlapping hierarchies. The GODDAG, or Generalised Ordered-Descendant
Directed Acyclic Graph, is defined as a labelled directed acyclic graph. As
for the tree structures of SGML/XML documents, leaf nodes represent the
character data content of the document, non-terminal nodes represent
elements and are labelled with the generic identifier. The set of leaf nodes
is referred to as the graph's frontier. An arc indicates a parent-child
relationship, modelling containment. A node is said to dominate all nodes
reachable from it. There is no requirement that the graph be rooted.
MECS, and TexMECS allow elements to overlap arbitrarily. Overlapping elements
are represented in the GODDAG as nodes with shared children. All elments
will dominate unique and contiguous sequences of leaf nodes. TexMECS has a
specific syntax for encoding elements that are interrupted by other
material. In the TEI a part attribute is sometimes used to indicate that the
linear form is in some way incomplete, and that more than one element
constitutes the entire element. It would be useful if these elements could
be treated as one element on the GODDAG level, for instance to facilitate
proximity search. In the GODDAG the whole element is represented by one
node, which is the parent of the fragment elements.
<sp who="AASE"><l part="i">Peer, you're
lying! <l><sp> <sp who="PEER
GYNT"> <stage>without stopping<stage>
<l part="f">No, I'm
not!<l><sp>
See Figure 1 for the GODDAG structure.

Figure 1

In the TEI there are several examples of elements used to recreate 'virtual
elements' from fragments of the text. (C.f.<join>, <span>,<fs>.) TexMECS also includes a specific syntax for
so-called virtual elements, elements that are created by fragments of the
text that may be discontiguous or out of order. A virtual element in TexMECS
has an element identifier and an id reference. In the GODDAG, the virtual
element is labelled with its generic identifier, and is the parent of all
children of the referenced element. This means that applications can access
and process virtual elements like any other elements.
Below is an example, in TexMECS syntax, that shows a simple reordering of
lines, in one view representing a dialogue between Hughie, Luis and Dewey,
in another representing the haiku they are trying to remember.
{sp who="HUGHIE"{{p{How did that translation go?}p} {lg
type="haiku"{{l{da de dum de dum,}l} {l=frog{gets a new frog,}l}
{l{...}l}}lg} }sp} {sp who="LOUIS"{{p{Er ...}p} {lg{{l=new{it's a new
pond.}l}}lg} }sp} {sp who="DEWEY"{{p{Ah ...}p} {lg{{l=pond{When the old
pond}l}}lg} {p{Right. That's it.}p}}sp}
{lg{{^l^pond}{^l^frog}{^l^new}}lg}
In the GODDAG generated from this example (Figure 2), both the dialogue and
the haiku are structured as part of the document, and none of the views is
dominant.

Figure 2

3 Implementation
A computational model of the above structure has been implemented in Java and
CommonLisp, along with loaders and linearisers for TexMECS, MECS and XML.
Using these, the GODDAG can function as a simple means of translating
between the various encoding schemes.

4 Serialization: some issues and problems
There is an obvious 1-1 relationship between the set of valid XML documents
and their tree representations. In the case of TexMECS, things are more
complicated. A given GODDAG structure can be serialized in different ways,
depending on whether nodes with multiple parents are serialized as virtual
elements or as overlap. On the other hand, there is a small class of TexMECS
documents with discontinuous elements which do not seem to correspond to any
GODDAG structure, if one tries to map discontinuous elements to a single
node. We try to formalize the relationship between GODDAG structures and
serializations and propose a solution for the aforementioned problem.

5 Conclusion
The work presented in this paper shows how to implement the data structures
and formalize some of the ideas presented in [1].

Bibliography

C.
M.Sperberg-McQueen
ClausHuitfeldt
GODDAG: a data structure for overlapping hierarchies

Principles of Digital Document Processing, Munich, September 2000

Berlin
Springer
(Proceedings in press)

Claus
Huitfeldt

C.M.Sperberg-McQueen
TexMECS: an experimental markup meta-language for complex documents

(January - February 2001, not complete)

()

Claus
Huitfeldt
A Multi-Element Code System

Working Papers of the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen

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Conference Info

In review

ACH/ALLC / ACH/ICCH / ALLC/EADH - 2002
"New Directions in Humanities Computing"

Hosted at Universität Tübingen (University of Tubingen / Tuebingen)

Tübingen, Germany

July 23, 2002 - July 28, 2008

72 works by 136 authors indexed

Affiliations need to be double-checked.

Conference website: http://web.archive.org/web/20041117094331/http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/allcach2002/

Series: ALLC/EADH (29), ACH/ICCH (22), ACH/ALLC (14)

Organizers: ACH, ALLC

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  • Language: English
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