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[school-discuss] [Fwd: please help me publicize this linux based product]

This is from Mike Eschman with Enigma Technologies Corp.  Mike, when
you sent it, it showed as coming from customerinquiry@enigma.com
rather than from mikee@enigma.com.  This mailing list is limited to
postings from subscribed email addresses to keep the spam down.

--
Doug Loss                 All I want is a warm bed
Data Network Coordinator  and a kind word and
Bloomsburg University     unlimited power.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Ashleigh Brilliant
February 10,2002

What we did
 

The Gutenberg Project at http://www.promo.net/pg/ has
been providing works of literature, history and biography
for multiple decades.  We have selected about a hundred favorites
onto a CD.  The CD is bootable.  The user places the CD in a bootable CD-ROM
and reboots.  The computer reboots under Linux with support for
audio, text mode screen, asci printer out, floppy out and refreshable
braille out.  Output can only be .txt, .jpg or .tiff.

Audio support is determined at bootup.  A RAM disk is used for temp. storage.
128 Meg is required.  Good with many sound cards, not all.
Moving to CVS managed packaging.

Revenue sharing with Project Gutenberg.

The books are indexed down to (1) work for collections of short works
(2) Book or Book-Chapter depending on how clean is input ?
(3) Act or Scene depending on input quality
(4) work if under a page or two
(5) if the work has a descriptive title, it is in the table of contents
(6) ALL CAPS removed because it is hard for viavoice to pronounce them
(7) accents removed for the same reason

The books can be read to you a line at a time.
Repeat lines as desired.

The books can be read to you a chapter, act, scene, story ~ at a time.

single keystroke commands control speech rate, volume.
one key to save current reading to floppy and ALT-key to asci printer.

everything is customizable.
all output is .txt or an image print.

all output is a piece of a book or an image.

it has a price.
discounts on volume.

Why :

to help the blind
to help English as a second language types
to help slow readers
to help good readers without a mom to read to them
to give you a means to read and cook at the same time
to provide a teacher's assistant when the teacher doesn't have a breathing
alternative
to participate in the joy of reading more directly
to help in educating any who will listen

A sample set of our classroom notes for teachers.
(A sample of our thinking - reflections on a Hunchback ... )

        New Orleans is preparing for Mardi Gras this coming Tuesday.  Ash Wednesday
follows, then Valentine's Day.  The city is full of churches.  It is Victor Hugo's Bicentennial in
Paris.  Hugo's "Hunchback" is a new musical in Paris and has been a Disney animated feature.  I
first learned of the "Hunchback" from black-and-white TV and Charles Laughton.

In this book, Victor Hugo takes some pains to speak of the Notre Dame Cathedral and Paris,
the Cathedral and the city in which it is set.  That is unusual to find in a "pot boiler" :-)
It is very much the way my parents generation thought  ( or at least the way i conjecture they might
have thought.  Better yet, its the way i hope they thought, or even hope its the way i think now
(or wanted to, or want to). [Pretty tense moment, eh :-)]).  Watch a Marx Brothers movie sometime -
a little singing and a little dancing to take a breather from the jokes and sight gags.  It's like
the French sticking ballets in the cracks of an opera.

The two cities - Paris and New Orleans are not unlike.  You can hear Hugo's complaints of modern
architecture and "progress" in any bar, coffee shop or bus in the city.

see websites --> (about the big easy) to aid in comparative essays by students
(neighborhoods) http://www.neworleans247.org/neighborhoods.html
(architecture) http://www.neworleansonline.com/neworleans/architecture/archtypes.html
(churches) http://www.laimages.com/nochurch1.html
(drainage) http://www.swbnola.org/Resources/drain_info.htm
(for more info) http://www.lib.lsu.edu/special/guides/no3.html
(cemeteries) http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/6157/Cemetery.html

It happens in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"
by Victor Hugo (1802-1885), In Book 3, Chapter 2.
That chapter is named "A Bird's Eye view of Parish".
Here are my notes on that chapter :
(first impressions including references to "enrichment" sites on the web)
Victor Hugo

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (or, Notre Dame de Paris) c1831
(Love for a young gypsy woman allows an ugly man to rise
above the world's hatred of him,
and to show his inner beauty).
 

1 - I feel the chapter could be used as a base (with a little rework) profitably
in English language arts, history, and social studies - somewhere from the 5th
grade through senior year of high school.  It could be used for regular classes
and honor classes - just turn the heat up or down during reassembly.

2 - in the previous chapter, Hugo describes Notre-Dame Cathedral in great
detail and inventories a number of changes that occurred over time to the building's
detriment.

3 - but the Cathedral also provides a view of Paris in every direction
and to the horizon.

4 - this is Paris in the 1400s.  A giant city that has grown too quickly.

5 - the old city is an island with north and south bridges.

6 - it grew onto the mainland over time.

7 - the old city's face is washed away - only the "Baudets" remain to mark
its day.

8 - new construction washes over old construction like a tide.
A great wall is build to contain the city.  Buildings rise within the
wall like water in a pond, taller and taller.

9 - About 1367 a second wall becomes necessary.

10 - these are all to be expected in a country's capitol.  and it draws the
best
and worst of a culture together in the same time and place, especially
 people.

11 - by the late 1400s a third wall is necessary.

12 - in the 1500s the city begins to shrink in on itself.

13 - people return to the old city to escape the congestion of the new
suburbs.

14 - a new wall of mud is thrown up by Louis 15th.

15 - "the wall walling Paris makes Paris murmur ...

16 - Paris is 3 distinct towns :
the city - smallest, oldest, this is the old island city with north-south
bridges.

university (left bank of Seine) "from the wine market to the mint ...
... the Romans built their baths here

and
the Town (right bank of the Seine)
"From the granary to the Tuileries ...
this one "leaks out" over the surrounding fields.

none of these three can survive without the other two.

Ownership :

The Island belongs to the Bishop.
The Merchants own the right bank.
The left bank belongs to the Rector.

The Provost rules over the Bishop, the Rector and the Merchants.
The Provost is a member of the ROYAL FAMILY.

city services :

the old city has the hospital and the courts.
the town has the markets and the place of executions.
the university has the "Pri-aux-Clercs" ???
"Offenses committed by scholars on the left bank
were tried in the law courts on the island and
punished on the right bank at Montfaucon ...

things got this way by REVOLT and Mutiny.

5 "islands" lay within the metropolis :
(1) Louviers, from which the trees have been removed.
(2-3) L'ile Saint-Louis where the bishop lives among deserted properties.
(4) The city itself (the old island),
coming to a point at
(5) the islet of the cow tender, under the platform of the Pont-Neuf

17 - the university has 6 strong gates and a moat.
at night the river is barred at both ends by massive iron
chains.

18 - Streets :
see --> http://www.philippe-auguste.com/uk/ville/plan.html
http://www.philippe-auguste.com/uk/index.html

and to locate referenced landmarks -->
http://www.sitesatlas.com/Europe/France/parismap.htm

19 - walking into the city : hugo's impressions (visitors impressions):

terrific depth of view, houses, bridges, streets "slate obelisks and stone
pyramids ...
everything is beautiful

the heraldry of the city incorporates a ship, which has been retained to this
day.

Notre-Dame is one of 21 churches

the courts lay on the river bank

... the Seine is masked by bridges
and the bridges are masked by houses

the roofs of houses by the river are green with mold,

much of the river bank is bare - laundry workers crowd these spots.

20 - The university consists of 42 colleges
the geometry of the university is based upon a single pattern,
which is squared then cubed.

21 - but the churches dominate the whole

22 - the university is hilly

23 - a great moss-grown wall separates the university from suburban fields.
 

in the narrator's time the university is known as the "Latin quarter"

24 - the town on the right bank appeared as a patchwork.
four grand hotels sit on the bank of the seine.
"...to the abbey of the Celestins, whose spire gracefully
relieved their line of gables and battlements."

25 - "Behind these palaces ...in all directions, now broken,
fenced in, battlemented like a citadel, now veiled by great
trees like a Carthusian convent, the ...Hôtel de Saint-Pol, where the
King of France ... lodg[ed] [22] princes of the rank of the dauphin
and the Duke of Burgundy, with their domestics and their suites, without
counting the great lords, and the emperor when he came to
view Paris, and the lions, who had their separate Hotel at the
royal Hotel.  ... a prince's apartment was
then composed of never less than eleven large rooms, from
the chamber of state to the oratory, not to mention the galleries,
baths, vapor-baths, and other "superfluous places," with
which each apartment was provided; not to mention the private
gardens for each of the king's guests; not to mention
the kitchens, the cellars, the domestic offices, the general
refectories of the house, the poultry-yards, where there were
twenty-two general laboratories, from the bakehouses to the
wine-cellars; games of a thousand sorts, malls, tennis, and riding
at the ring; aviaries, fishponds, menageries, stables, barns,
libraries, arsenals and foundries.  "

26 - "Behind rose the
forest of spires of the Palais des Tournelles.  Not a view in
the world, either at Chambord or at the Alhambra, is more
magic, more aerial, more enchanting, than that thicket of
spires, tiny bell towers, chimneys, weather-vanes, winding
staircases, lanterns through which the daylight makes its way,
which seem cut out at a blow, pavilions, spindle-shaped turrets,
or, as they were then called, "tournelles," all differing in
form, in height, and attitude.  One would have pronounced
it a gigantic stone chess-board... "

27 - "The center of
the Town was occupied by a pile of houses for the populace.
It was there, in fact, that the three bridges disgorged upon
the right bank, and bridges lead to the building of houses
rather than palaces."

28 - "With these two quarters, one of Hotels, the other of houses,
the third feature of aspect presented by the city was a long
zone of abbeys, which bordered it in nearly the whole of its
circumference, from the rising to the setting sun, and, behind
the circle of fortifications which hemmed in Paris, formed a
second interior enclosure of convents and chapels."

29 - see --> http://www.chez.com/delu/Maine.htm

30 - "Finally, the fourth compartment, which stretched itself out
in the agglomeration of the roofs on the right bank, and
which occupied the western angle of the enclosure, and the
banks of the river down stream, was a fresh cluster of palaces
and Hotels pressed close about the base of the Louvre."

31 - see ---> http://www.hlla.com/reference/louvre2.html

32 three disputes involving Notre-Dame :--->
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1224chartres.html

33 historical background to the chapter :-->
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/

34 In the final segment of this chapter Hugo contrasts the Paris
in "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame", that is
Fifteenth century Paris, with present day Paris
( the Paris of the Nineteenth century ).

35  Hugo fears that the Tuileries are to be demolished.

36  Hugo maintains that destroying a neighborhood's architecture obscures its
age and character.

37  This spiritual essence extends even to doors, door knobs and the door
knockers upon them.

38  Hugo complains that nineteenth century Paris does not possess a physical
signature.

39  Hugo suggests the city will rebuild itself every fifty years.

40  He thinks modern nineteenth century monuments look more like
cakes, clothing and even clarinets ( Palace of the Bourse ).

41  Hugo chides contemporary architects for using flat roofs in Paris :
" roofs are made to be swept ...

42  He compares the Rue de Rivoli to a checkerboard.

43  Fifteenth century Paris can still be glanced from a hilltop at sunrise,
when the Sun illuminates the churches of the old city
and the bells and worshipers of Paris create a "Furnace of Music ...
 

thanks to Fordham University and
Prof. Barry Bugdoll (Art History)
@ http://www.fordham.edu

Mike Eschman, etc... @ 2002
engima technologies corp.
52 Oaklawn Dr.
Metairie, La. 70005
http://www.engima.com
meschman@engima.com

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