This document is intended to aid those using the West Heslerton Structures
Catalogue Web-CD and also to assist those in the process of adopting a
similar system. First and foremost, it should be stated that the catalogue
was not intended to replace the variety of techniques currently used to
assess information from excavated sites, which include the use of
digitised site plans and a variety of interactive databases. It was
primarily designed to enhance distributed information in a user-friendly
way, which would facilitate access to both primary and secondary data for
other members of the project team.
The initial entry into the catalogue is primarily visual, with
digitised plans of the excavation acting as visual cues to the areas of
interest. Although at first sight it may appear that the zooming in to the
feature of interest is interactive, in fact the scenes are set at the time
that the clickable map is created, and the views cannot be altered by the
user. For those interested in accessing a specific feature, this can be
achieved without having to use the visual cues by using the context search
routine. If you know the full Key_Id of a context, typing in the Key_Id
will take you immediately to the structure or feature which contains the
context you wish to analyse.
3.2 Aims
The catalogue is to help those wishing to gain a moderate amount of
knowledge about the site.
It is an aid to the assessment, analysis and interpretation
of the site and is not the completed site report.
It is not static, and although it will ultimately form a core of the
supporting data for the published paper reports, it will change as new
data are
analysed, added and cross-referenced to other catalogue entries.
It is in a format designed to be accessible to as many
people as possible.
To enable it to be easy and comfortable to use, decisions had to be
made on how much information was to be included, and what would be
excluded. The inclusion of all the data
available would make the catalogue unwieldy and it would immediately cease
to
fulfil the purpose for which it was created. To
undertake a total primary analysis, the user must go back to the primary
sources.
The catalogue, although
changing, is a fixed medium with links established that can only be edited
by opening the separate documents within it. The user can only
reveal, not create. The catalogue entries are built by the core project
team, although any specialist may contribute both data and additional
pages for future linking by the core
team.
The WEB-CD is of course read-only and cannot be directly
edited.
The relatively primitive WEB editing tools and present limitations in HTML
make re-formatting the catalogue a difficult exercise, although we
anticipate that this will change in the
future.
WEB browsers generally provide very poor printing facilities and it
is anticipated that we may have to create in-house printing tools to
generate a paper copy of the full catalogue for archiving
purposes.
4. Software used in the development of the
catalogue
Each catalogue entry
which constitutes a single WEB Page is started following the creation of
a clickable plan of the area concerned, generated at a standard scale
using
G-Sys. This entry is additionally used to add clickable hot-spots
to images and to extract some of the database components. Once the
clickable
map is created the initial page is prepared using Microsoft
Word and edited using Netscape and Microsoft Wordpad.
Database tables are imported from dBase tables loaded into Microsoft
Excel. Adobe Photoshop is used to modify and edit the
pictures and images to be inserted into the document (the matrix diagram,
scanned sections and photographs extracted from Kodak Photo-CDs). Most
of the tabulated data relating to material culture, faunal and
environmental
evidence was initially prepared by hand using dBase III format tables
loaded
into FoxPro for Windows and Microsoft Excel. To facilitate
page updating as the record is enriched with additional identification,
more detailed dating and phasing information tables is now being generated
through Microsoft Access reports, which reduce the amount of
preparation
by hand, although the results still have to be passed through Excel
to ensure correct formatting. In house software created using GFA-Basic
for Windows is being used to update the HTML source files so that
links
between multiple tables are retained when a table is replaced. As the work
progresses the level of automation will increase, as more automated
editing
of the HTML source files becomes possible.
5. Creating the Catalogue
5.1 A step by step guide
The creation of a document
for the catalogue is a complex procedure and not easily explained. There
are many ways to achieve the same result, and familiarity with a
particular
program will bias the catalogue author towards its use. There follows
below
a sample step-by-step guide to the creation of a catalogue entry.
Sections. If the original
sections are drawn
on permatrace, they are photocopied and the photocopies used for scanning.
The sections are scanned at 600 DPI (dots per inch) and saved as
TIFF files.
Excel is used to record HTML notes, objects and animal bone
from the
context, object and animal bone databases. The individual databases are
opened and all information deemed to be irrelevant to the catalogue entry
is deleted. An HTM file is created for each database (using the
Tools\Internet_Assistant_Wizard sub-menu) and the database file closed
without saving the deletions.
Also create a matrix bitmap if appropriate. It is copied from the
relevant source and pasted into Adobe Photoshop, then saved as a
BMP (bitmap) file.
Photoshop. The
section TIFF files are opened and any blemishes removed. A scale
bar is added by copying and pasting a .TIF file created (in Photoshop)
for adding to images scanned at 600 DPI. It must be added before the size
of the canvas is altered to ensure that the correct proportions are
maintained.
The image is cropped and the image width (Image\Image size\Print
size\Width
sub-menu) is altered so the image fits onto a web page. As a convention,
the project used an image width of 20cm for post-holes, 30cm for
pits/ditch
sections and 40cm for anything larger, such as Grubenhaus sections. The
sections are then saved as JPG files (which are smaller and thus
more economical than TIFFs).
The matrix bitmap is
cropped to size. It is changed to an indexed colour mode (again
to save disk space) and saved as a JPG file.
Word. Create or
copy document. The easiest way to do this is to decide on a format and
keep it as an original or source document and then save it as the new
document
you want to create. Alternatively, just 'save as' or copy an appropriate
existing document. The first document is the most arduous to create, but
once in existence there should be no need to start every document from
scratch.
If the document was copied the titles need to be changed to the
relevant contexts.
Fill in totals
tables, where appropriate. Each table title is bookmarked so it can
be reached through a hyper-link from the context and finds table (e.g.
DD35Animal_Bone_Totals)
Open Notes HTML. Copy
and paste into document (at present Word will not allow you to paste
directly
into a table in an HTM file). Cut and paste into context
table.
Open Objects HTML. Copy
and paste into objects table.
animal bone table and
objects table. In both tables, if there are few finds the table is
book-marked
at the title (e.g. Objects). If there are many, the first entry of each
context is book-marked so the relevant totals table is directly linked
to the correct place in the objects or animal bone table (e.g.
DD34Animal_Bone).
notes and sections (e.g. DD34Notes)
totals tables, if relevant. (e.g. DD35Animal_Bone_Totals)
Create hyper-links:
from context table to Notes
from context table to totals tables
from totals tables to objects and animal bone tables.
Note that in large documents it is quicker to create the hyper-links
in Netscape Communicator rather than Word.
Insert sections and matrix (where applicable) as a
picture into the
document. These files must always remain with the document file in the
directory as the document is only linked to the sections and does
not contain them.
Create the clickable
map. It is necessary to create any links that may exist as early as
possible to cut down on editing time later. Any external document name
will always be phrased in the same way (see file
names).The clickable maps are created in G-Sys at a screen
resolution
of 1024 x 768 (as this was felt to be a common resolution). The site grid
is retained to give a scale and a quick indication of area. The map is
created in G-Sys [Files\HTML Files\Create New Clickable ISMap\Use Full
Screen sub-menu] and the Hot-Spots added using an amended version of the
Key-Id (e. g. 2DD38) so every Hot-Spot is identifiable in the HTML source
[Word View\HTML Source or Communicator Edit\Source Code].
Open the clickable map
HTML in Word. Once the map is created, the Hot-Spots need to be
edited in their source mode to make them look for the bookmarks within
the document. A typical source code will read something like
and needs the following
editing to make it find a bookmark called DD38Notes- an a
before the href (to anchor the text/image to a hyper-link) and a hash
(#,
a necessary internal link to link the Hot-Spot to the bookmark) to replace
the area code which does not appear in the bookmark (e. g. "#DD38.HTM").
Further, the ".HTM" at the end of the phrase needs to be replaced with
the bookmark phrase (e. g. "#DD38Notes", as the bookmark at the section
where the Hot-Spot needs to point to is "DD38Notes"). The bookmark can
be anything suitable, for instance, if there are two sections for a
particular
feature, the bookmarks may be DD38N and DD38E, the Hot-Spot
phrase will then be "#DD38N" and "#DD38E". Note that case is important
and the same upper and lower case letters found in the bookmark should
be used in the hyper-link.
The file drive and directory locators also need to be removed so only
the JPG is located in the image source (e. g. <IMG.src="2dd34.jpg">).
This will enable the map to be opened wherever the file is placed, rather
than leaving it locked into a specific file location.
Copy and paste the clickable map into the document.
Check the document and links in the browser. If any links do not
work, edit the HTM source file to correct the faults.