Section 2.5
THE VALUE ADDED BY FORMAL METHODS
by Ingo H. Kropac

outline of the chapter

If we agree now on the existence of genuine formal methods in the
humanities and on their definition, we have to ask for the value added
in applying those methods in the academic world. No doubt, this question
affects research as well as teaching.

(1) The application of tools happens on two levels. (a) At the survival
level, where people often meet the formal world for the first time, they
learn to identify the formal requirements for their fields of interest,
they become confronted with an increasing amount of information they
never could search and retrieve than by using formal methods
implicitely. (b) At the basic level they have to identify und understand
the co-incidence of tools and problems to be solved by them - in this
order. As a result people know what tools they should apply for specific
fields of problems, what skills they additionally need and how they can
acquire them.
(2) The application of methods at the advanced level requires an
abstraction of the material of the investigation as well as of the
questions to be answered.
Formal procedures provide for the (deductive) explanation of the
underlying structures and processes and do not restrict themselves to
the interpretation of concrete examples. From this follows an in-depth
view and understanding of phenomena and their manifestations. As a
prerequisite for the analysis knowledge about all facets of the problem
and about the application of the adequate method and the adequate tool
is required.
(3) The expert level is no more application oriented, but adds value by
developing new methods (e.g. algorithms, tools, etc.) for the
explanation of human activities in any way, following formal
(mathematical) principles. These developments affect again the other
levels and results in a spiral of progress in the application of formal
methods.

Generally speaking, the application of formal methods will not supersede
the traditional ones, but it obviously leads to an progress in the
humanities and to an expansion of cognition by offering views and
procedures at information which never have been achieved before.

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Section 3.1b


AN EXAMPLE: INTEGRATED COMPUTER-SUPPORTED EDITING (ICE)


by Ingo H. Kropac


The method called "Integrated Computer-Supported Editing" was developed
to combine reliable methods and techniques in scholarly editing with
recent information technologies. The goal of the method is not
typesetting another traditionally produced edition in an digital form,
but the support of interdisciplinary work and transparency of the
editing process by formal methods: rule-based automating procedures and
the application of the editor's special knowledge.
The physical representation of editorial information systems has to
provide for the producer's and the user's view: On the one hand an
expert system  represents a virtual archive of original sources for any
type of analysis, on the other hand data are migrated to multi-media
based and easily usable application systems to be distributed by the
prevailing "industrial standards".

For these reasons all entities to be documented (historical sources and
objects) are represented in several levels, following an iterative
process of research: from the facsimiles to transcripts and revised
texts. All transformations from one level to the next should be
automated as far as possible; at least it's guaranteed that the
potential user understands all decisions and interpretations of the
editorial staff. Besides that the external and internal features of the
sources as well as their tradition is documented, accompanied by
representations of declarative and procedural knowledge. Therefore
advanced data base applications and knowledge representations are
combined to an integrated information system, which can be accessed
and/or migrated in different ways for three clearly defined basic user
groups: Casual users access a (static) WWW-system which provides for an
elaborated interface and Java-based search facilities. An
assistant-driven CGI-interface will satisfy the requirements of the
advanced users in the near future; the expert user can get access to the
released parts of the virtual archive individually.

For the time being, the ICE-method is concretely realized by a project
called "Fontes Civitatis Ratisponensis (FCR)", a bilateral project,
carried out in co-operation between a research institute and a city
archive to evaluate its scientific and strategic implications. This name
stands for the exemplary edition of the medieval records of Ratispone
(Germany) as well as for a concept of synergetic co-operation between
archivists, historians, exponents of the historical basic disciplines
and information scientists for the preservation and documentation of the
written cultural heritage. Local computers and/or net worked systems are
used as a carrier for the documentations and facsimile editions which
were migrated form an expert system and prepared for the World-Wide Web.
To reach as many potential interested parties as possible, the
performance of the WWW versions is offered to them by CDROMs, too.