E-Books

 

E-book Reader by SONY

E-Book or Electronic Book is the digital equivalent for the printed book. E-books are a fairly recent phenomenon. These small, portable, electronic devices are not just books; they could be magazines, books o even newspapers. Some of the advantages are: Text can be searched automatically and cross-referenced using hyperlinks, making the e-book format ideal for works that take profit from such functions. An e-book can automatically open at the last read page or E-books allow for greater fidelity in color reproduction compared to CMYK color printing (although some e-book readers have only monochrome displays), for instances.  Some of disadvantages such as If not viewed on computers, e-books require the purchase of an electronic device and/or peripheral software which can display them. If they are to be viewed on a personal computer, it may require additional software and Looking at a screen for a long time may cause eye trouble and sometimes headaches.

The trend of the electronic books is developing until now there are several projects to make digital libraries, such us that who wants to make a common library with books from all across Europe. And there are already some such as Miguel de Cervantes’s Virtual Library.

References:

• E-book. (2008, December 26). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 12:52, December 26, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=E-
• Beverly L. Harrison, “E-Books and the Future of Reading,” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 32-39, May/Jun, 2000 (http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/38.844370)
• E-books and Their Future in Academic Libraries (July 2001) from D-Lib Magazine. Retrieved 12:57 December 26, from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july01/snowhill/07snowhill.html

 

Differences between HTML and XML

According to Wikipedia XML language is a meta markup language that is now widely used. XML was developed by the World Wide Web Consortium, in a committee created and chaired by Jon Bosak. The main purpose of XML was to simplify SGML by focusing on a particular problem — documents on the Internet. XML remains a meta-language like SGML, allowing users to create any tags needed and then describing those tags and their permitted uses. And HTML is: is the predominant markup language for Web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document written in tags The main differences between XML and HTML are:

• It does not require DTD or Document Type Definition, because XML points to the structure of the information, what saves time and simplifies the software.
• XML does not accept exceptions so every tag does the same action.
• AND content models do not exist, so the elements must be named always in a established order.
• It does not have data, which in SGML allows including specific information such as mathematic symbols.
• It is simple and less extensive than SGML, because of this is much simpler to use
• It is independent from the Internet explorers, because instead of adding to the presentation tags, the explorer will refer you to an style page made with XSL

Resources:

•  HTML. (2008, December 13). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:35, December 14, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=HTML&oldid=257683789
• Markup language. (2008, December 14). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:36, December 14, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Markup_language&oldid=257834827
• Hipertexto, el nuevo concepto de documento en la cultura de la imagen (2008, November 23) by María Jesús Lamarca Lapuente in Hipertexto. Retrieved 20:39, December 14 from: http://www.hipertexto.info/documentos/lenguajes_h.htm

Orality and Hypermedia

First of all, let us define the concepts involved. On the one hand, according to N.H. Nelson, the term hypermedia is used as an extension of the term hypertext, in which graphics, audio, video, plain text and hyperlinks are involved, being the World Wide Web the clearest example. On the other hand orality involves the capacity of speaking of each person as well as the gestures and other sources used.

According to experts on the subject, the hypermedia has changed the orality. As Perez Tornero mentions, due to the hypermedia we can send an oral message from one point of the planet to another, giving a kind of globalisation to the text and without realising how far the person receiving the message is. However, according to Brian and Williams, the hypermedia contributes to the worsening of the language as they, as well as networks, are opened to anybody. Besides, almost anything is accepted and owing to that, some writers transfer some of their bad acquired habits in writing from one media to another. Moreover, a big percentage of the users may write without any kind of information or taking it from poor sources.

 

References:

• Patrick O’Brian & Noel Williams: Computers and Writing, the state of the art. Published by Intellect Books in 1992 ISBN 187151620X, 9781871516203 retrieved from http://books.google.es/books?id=Q75qE4u9fEgC
• De la escritura la hipermedia (30-11-1999) by Jose Manuel Perez Tornero from Comunidad de formadores (retrieved December 3th 2008) from
  http://e-formadores.redescolar.ilce.edu.mx/recursos/pdfs_tornero/escritura_hipermedia.pdf
• Hypermedia (2008, October 15). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 12:54, November 30, 2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hypermedia&oldid=245357554
• Orality, Literacy, Digitality (Agoust 1996) In Tarleton State University. Retrieved: December 3th 13.02. From http://www.tarleton.edu/~lilly/discuss2.htm

 

 

 

Group members:   Gorka Lozano, Aitor Macia, Ander Martinez, Milia Mayora and Ricardo Merelas