Noteworthy Inote
The Institute, which supports computer-based faculty research projects
for Religion, History, Art, Literature, Foreign and Ancient Languages,
and more, has built a Java-based application that allows for the
annotation of images with text, audio, or other images using one
or more overlays. The application, deployed from an RS/6000,
is not an image editor; it enables the user to make a notation
without altering the image. Inote can also automatically
identify lines or columns of text for annotation and will soon
allow users to connect SGML transcriptions and annoted images.
This application is helping researchers make great strides.
The most noticeable benefit is the time saved by
annotating an image instead of file footnoting. The "info"
function of Inote, which reveals text information on image provenance
and copyright, has made it easier to negotiate electronic
publishing rights with some libraries and museums that hold
objects for which researchers need digital images.
The Institute runs approximately fifty UNIX machines from Sun,
SGI, DEC, and IBM( RS/6000s), plus Intel machines running
Windows NT and Windows 95. This truly heterogeneous environment
demands Java, a common development platform.
The Benefits of Babble
The Institute has also developed an SGML-capable synoptic text
tool that can display multiple texts in parallel windows. This
Java-based application called Babble is used in a number of the
Institute’s projects that involve textual data in multiple
non-Roman character sets. Generally used for projects in
religion or history where ancient languages are employed in
classic texts, Babble uses Unicode, an ISO 16-bit character
set standard. Unicode allows multilingual texts, using mixed
character sets, to be displayed simultaneously. Babble lets
languages from long-ago, such as Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic, and
Aramaic, "speak" to the researchers.
No More Application Dependencies
Babble eliminates character set limitations within a single
document on a Web server. (Typically documents are restricted
to the Roman alphabet and one additional set.) Java was the
only environment to support the system fonts that make it
possible to deliver Unicode text involving multiple character
sets to the researchers. This freedom allows researchers at
the Institute to electronically distribute over the
Internet text that would otherwise be impossible to represent.
Researchers at the Institute have greatly increased their
productivity and removed a step from their work flow. No
longer having to "snail mail" disks with files that are
encoded in platform-specific, proprietary word-processing
software has afforded the researchers the opportunity to
capitalize on the speed of the Internet.
Business Profile
The University of Virginia located in Charlottesville, Virginia,
offers forty-eight bachelor's degrees in forty-six fields,
ninety-four master's degrees in sixty-four fields,
six educational specialist degrees, two first-professional
degrees (law and medicine), and fifty-five doctoral degrees
in fifty-four fields.
The University's ten schools are:
- School of Architecture
- College of Arts and Science
- Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
- Colgate Darden Graduate School of Business Administration
- McIntire School of Commerce
- Curry School of Education
- School of Engineering and Applied Science
- School of Law
- School of Medicine
- School of Nursing