Subject: First Contact
Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 10:23:35 -0800
Dear Colleague,
Receiving this note means that I have included you in a group to whom I propose to send brief updates about the OTEP/OTAP/OHD (Ottoman Text Edition, Ottoman Text Archive, Ottoman Historical Dictionary) projects. If I am mistaken about your interest or its extent, please let me know by replying to this note with a request to be removed from the group.
The first matter we would like to bring to your attention is the following:
As a result of our conversations at the recent MESA meeting, we are attempting to reach some agreement on basic standards for creating Ottoman transcription metatexts (or electronic texts). One of the more urgent matters from our point of view is the question of "sort order" or the alphabetic order we will use to order lexical items for storage and analysis. There is no accepted or traditional sort order for Ottoman transcription (at least no adequate, comprehensive order), so anything adopted will be essentially arbitrary. All that is necessary is that the order be in some manner logical and acceptable to a majority in the scholarly community.
If you have any interest in this issue, please go to our website http://courses.washington.edu/otap/index.html and look under "Resources" where you will find a pair of sample sort orders. We would very much like to receive your comments and suggestions concerning these samples. If you have not already done so, you will need to download a Unicode font and set your browser to support Unicode. You will find links to an appropriate font on the website. A Unicode font will also be necessary to view Ottoman texts appearing on the site.
You will likely receive a version of this appeal for comments from several sources. Our apologies. In the future, much of our detailed information distribution will be limited to this group.
Our best wishes for the New Year,
Walter
Walter G. Andrews
2908 131st Pl. NE
Bellevue, WA 98005
http://depts.washington.edu/otap
(ol_109.html)