Cocoon and Digital Libraries in the Humanities Hugh A. Cayless UNC Chapel Hill

outline What is Apache Cocoon? Why is it particularly useful for digital library applications in the Humanities? Getting started with Cocoon Some examples –A Cocoon webapp –Integrating software into Cocoon

What is Apache Cocoon? An XML-based (web) publishing framework written in Java Some explanatory digressions: –XML –XSLT –SAX

Digressions continued… Wimmel, Walter (1960) Kallimachos in Rom, Wiesbaden. or Galinsky, Karl (1969) "The Triumph Theme in the Augustan Elegy," Wiener Studien 82,

Digressions continued… Wimmel, Walter (1960) Kallimachos in Rom, Wiesbaden. Kallimachos in Rom Walter Wimmel 1960 Wiesbaden

What is Apache Cocoon? Some explanatory digressions: –XML (e)X(tensible) M(arkup) L(anguage) –XSLT (e)X(tensible) S(tylesheet) L(anguage) T(ransformations) –SAX S(imple) A(PI) (for) X(ML)

Cocoon continued… More explanations: –Pipeline-based processing Generators Transformers Serializers Readers –The Sitemap

Cocoon continued… Separation of Concerns

SoC How does this help? –Focus on establishing contracts, rather than training. –Scholars don’t have to radically change the way they do things. –Programmers don’t have to create systems from scratch.

Humanities Digital Libraries Characteristics –Often focused on documents –Multiple languages –Integration of images with texts desired –Integration of analytical tools –Good search and retrieval tools

Humanities Digital Libraries Obstacles –Time –Money –Unfamiliarity of content providers with technology –Unfamiliarity of technologists with content

Cocoon’s Solutions Time –Reduces the amount of time spent in negotiations between scholars and programmers –Reduces the actual amount of code that needs to be written.

Cocoon’s Solutions Money –It’s free –It can run in a servlet container that’s also free –It can run on a software platform that’s free

Cocoon’s Solutions Content providers –Only have to learn enough technology to provide the content with sufficient data and metadata.

Cocoon’s Solutions technologists –Can focus on solving specific problems posed by the material, e.g. writing code to analyze content.

Getting Started Downloads: – – Installation: –Install Java –Install Tomcat –Put cocoon.war in tomcat/webapps/ –Start Tomcat

Getting started Documentation –Online documentation much improved –Very active user / development community Books –Cocoon: Building XML Applications, Matthew Langham and Carsten Zeigler, New Riders, –Cocoon Developer’s Handbook, Lajos Moczar and Jeremy Aston, Developer’s Library, 2003.

Some Examples A cocoon web application: –EpiDocinator Integrating software –Transcoder –CHET-C-java