Armin Lange, Computer Aided Text-Reconstruction and
Transcription: CATT-Manual, with an Introduction by Hermann
Lichtenberger and an Appendix (on "Publishing the Results") by
Timothy Doherty. T<"u>bingen: J.C.B.Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1993.
Pp. xii + 160. ISBN 3-16-146149-5.
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NOTE: This review has been commissioned by the Jewish
Quarterly Review published by the Center for Judaic Studies
at the University of Pennsylvania. Because of the nature of the
volume under review, which deals with a rapidly changing world,
JQR has permitted electronic pre-publication release of
this basic information to appropriate outlets such as
IoudRev. Please reproduce this notice with any cross-
posting of the review. The author reserves the right to modify
the review for final publication in the JQR.
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<0.1>
The back cover of this slim and well illustrated volume is worth
quoting in its entirety: "This manual presents a new way of
reconstructing damaged manuscripts, inscriptions and early prints
using recently developed image editing software. The method --
called Computer Aided Text-Reconsctuction and Transcription
(CATT) -- has been developed on the Dead Sea Scrolls, but can be
used for any damaged text."
<0.2>
The CATT approach has been developed by Armin Lange, at the time
(the Introduction is dated March 1993) an advanced graduate
student working on a dissertation on the Dead Sea Scrolls at the
University of Munster and an associate of its Institutum Judaicum
Delitzschianum. Lange has used available software and hardware
operating in a DOS (IBM compatible) computer environment, but the
procedures he documents can be performed on any system with
sophisticated image editing capabilities.
<0.3>
The book deserves to be reviewed as promptly as possible, since
it deals with a timely and important subject, but in its details
is out of date before it has even gone to press. The techniques
it describes remain valuable for anyone working with similar
materials of any language or date. The exact computer equipment,
programs, and operation instructions are largely irrelevant. It
would in most instances be disadvantageous to attempt to
duplicate Lange's exact system, given the technological advances
that have appeared in the meantime and will continue to appear.
<1.1>
Lange describes a "minimum configuration" consisting of an IBM
(or compatible) 386 machine with 8 megabytes RAM and at least 200
megabytes hard disk storage. The graphics board and screen are
SVGA, with 800 x 600 resolution and 256 colors shades. His
"medium [since many larger systems could also be devised]
configuration" is a 486 machine with 16 m RAM and a 500 m hard
disk. Its SVGA graphics board and screen are capable of 1024 x
768 resolution, with 16.7 million color distinctions. Windows 3.1
is the interface of choice, running under MS-DOS 5.0 or higher. A
scanner with a minimum of 300 dpi and 256 grayshades is
recommended.
<1.2>
Several image processing programs are described in detail and
with great clarity (including clear photographs of screens):
FotoTouch 2.1 (based on Ansel 1.0, sold with Logitech's Scanman
256 hand scanner);
PhotoStyler 1.1 (from Ulead, now purchased by Aldus, similar to
Adobe's Photoshop for the Macintosh);
PhotoStyler 2.0 (a major update of the preceding);
Image Pals Album (included in PhotoStyler 2.0, but also
separately available for organizing images and image excerpts);
Picture Publisher 3.1 (from Micrografx).
Concluding comments on file compression and conversion, editing
and publishing the results round out this handbook. An index is
also provided.
<2.1>
The primary value of this volume rests in its detailed verbal
descriptions and photographic representations of various
processes that can be applied to the manuscript or inscription
(or other digitized material) under examination. A somewhat more
technical discussion of these same matters, which in may ways
complements Lange's work, may be found in the guest contribution
by James Marchand to my OFFLINE 37 column (Religious Studies
News 7.2, March 1992 = Bulletin of the Council of
Societies for the Study of Religion 21.2, April 1992)
entitled "The Computer as Camera and Darkroom." Whereas Marchand
writes for those who have some minimal background in photography
and/or computing, and thus covers the ground more thoroughly,
especially with regard to theoretical matters, Lange takes almost
nothing for granted. In Lange's handbook, special terminology and
concepts are carefully explained and little is left to the
imagination -- you can see (but only in black and white; the
actual color images on the computer screen are even more
impressive!) what the results are of such procedures (applied to
part or the whole image) as:
changing brightness, contrast, colors
highlighting, modulation of background, etc.
changing size or shape
magnification and selection of sub-sections
negative and mirror images
rotation (for alignment, etc.)
joining fragments
overlaying of fragments, letters, etc.
reconstructing text gaps.
<00.1>
This book ought to be examined carefully -- or even cursorily! --
by anyone interested in (or skeptical of) computer enhanced
exploration of digitized materials in general, or of such
fragmentary and damaged written materials as the Dead Sea Scrolls
(from which all examples are taken) in particular. It is a very
redundant book insofar as each of the image manipulation programs
described will do virtually identical things for many of the
functions. And the programs it describes will no longer be the
most powerful (or affordable) available as time goes on. But new
or updated software will certainly continue to perform these same
functions, and for that reason the book will continue to be
valuable as a basic guide to the possible -- and sometimes to the
previously highly improbable. As Jim Marchand notes at the end of his
abovementioned contribution, "The next generation of scholars will
have to become not only computer literate, but also image literate."
Lange's book is another useful step in those directions.
Robert A. Kraft
University of Pennsylvania
College Hall Box 36
Philadelphia PA 19104-6303
kraft@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
//end//