WhiteWall - View Source: Published Info

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Joerg here.

During the initial phase of the Whitewall project I uploaded an extract of my index database to Glorantha literature on the Yahoogroup:

Go to http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/whitewall/files/ and click Background.

The data is a zipped Access 7.0 database. Unzipped, it ought to be readable by higher versions as well as Excel spread-sheets.

If anybody cannot access the data, let me know via the list or private e-mail.

I might as well tell what I use it for, what conventions I use, and how I use it.

[Source Abbreviations]

[Related Topics] and the problem of multiple spellings/phrasings

[Database Tech Talk]

[Map Making]

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<Jane>

OK, I've downloaded, inserted into my own main DB, and had a first pass at some pages to display it. No link from my main site as yet, but take a look and see what you think.

http://www.jane-williams.me.uk/glorantha/whitewall/sourceDB.cfm

If you want to link directly to any of the entries, the URL looks like this:

http://www.jane-williams.me.uk/glorantha/whitewall/showentryfull.cfm?entry=Arkat

so that would take you to "Arkat". Checking that an entry exists before linking to it would be a good idea.

*March 2005:* since the Fan Publication Policy intervened, Joerg has asked me to take this off-line. Links to it will now say "Sorry, but until Joerg sorts out his position with Issaries' Fan Publication Policy, this is off-line."

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<Joerg>

December 2005:

I checked the idea with Greg at Tentacles, and I received a "go ahead - I want this stuff for the official website". This means I can't activate the material here, and I will have to find the time to create the PHP interface and transform the database into a MySQL project, then clear the technical stuff with Nils Weinander and the content side with Greg.

For the time being, try to make do with the offline data you may have downloaded.

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<Joerg>

Ok, time to apologize for all the oddities in my database.

When I started collecting this beast (around 1993, starting with the KoS index and Genertela Book), I used a single text file which had the entries in alphabetical order, followed by a stab at categorizing them, a list of sources where info was published, and descriptions and quotes. (On an Atari ST, no less...)

A couple of players in my group studied object oriented programming, so I included things like asterisks, dollar signs etc to mark different kinds of information in the vague hope that this could be parsed into objects with inheritances etc.

Instead, I bought a new computer, and with it Access 7.0 as a database environment. So I started to convert the text files by hand into a few very basic tables. To be honest, some sections of the letters S to Z still haven't been converted completely, despite Alex's help automating the process.

Whenever I found the time, I added new info from Glorantha publications. Following my very private interests...

When Hero Wars came to be, Greg experimented with some cultural glossaries. I put those into database format, extracted new entries from throwaway mentions in Greg's entries, added material from other sources, and presented the results. This way I was able to incorporate some draft informations, too. This was when I added the "author" field to the database.

Greg's entries sometimes consisted of little more than a word or half a sentence, truncated by an "&". I adopted this as my convention for bits and pieces in descriptions which needed future revisits.

At one point the database suffered significant damage when one of the characters from my original files which I wanted to eliminate summarily turned out to be the place holder for numbers. I noticed way too late...

My use of the See Also list is somewhat haphazard. Cross-references here can mean anything from "is another name/database entry for..." to "I have a cool idea these two might be connected".

Overall, the database works fine for me. I hope you will find this excerpt useful.

I have provided a certain number of quotations from Issaries Inc. publications. These are copyrighted material, and I guess we ought to make that clear. As it happens, several of these have already been used in context on the list. Others still wait to be put in context, but I'm fairly positive that most will be used sooner or later.

I'd prefer to provide entries which have been rephrased for the public parts of this project, but given the quote-counterquote feasts certain list members like myself and Peter Metcalfe are prone to offer, this would lessen their value.