Archilochos 'Proposal'

This is a proposal for a third year undergraduate computer project to be carried out under the supervision of Dr Mike Dobson of Pallas at Exeter University.

The project will consist of a critique, setting out the purpose and aims of the project and a website, which will be the end-product of the project, and will be published on the World Wide Web.

There is also a section on the Poet and his background.

The critique will discuss the rationale for selecting Classical Studies Undergraduates as the target user of the website. It will examine theories of education for such a group so as to justify a web based approach. Consideration will be given to inviting local Classical Studies students to complete a short questionnaire to try to establish their needs Particular attention will also be paid to users who have sight or hearing disabilities by providing as much legibility as possible for the visual material and to reproduce the audio material wherever possible in words. The Critique will also examine published work done on optimising the layout of web pages, especially the home page to ensure that the site meets the needs of the target audience as closely as possible..

The Critique will set out a structure for the website together with a flowchart. Subject to the work done above, this will probably include, for each poem, · Text in Greek. · A variety of English translations. · An audio of the Greek (possibly sung). · An audio of the English translations. · How this poem came to us, if known. · Why it is worth reading.

No decision has yet been made whether to categorise the poems by theme (Patriotism, Criticism, Obscenity) or by metre, or whether to allow each poem or fragment to stand alone. No great space will be devoted to restating biographical details which have been reconstructed from the most dubious sources and are readily available in books about Archilochos. The Critique will review other websites that refer to Archilochos and explain why these do not already meet the needs and objectives of the proposed site.

Identified challenges include · working out the most effective way of reproducing Ancient Greek fonts on each user’s browser page. Options include turning all instances of Greek text into GIF images, providing a Greek font for download and using a ‘unicode’ font. The main website will be written in XHTML using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). It is possible that some of the supporting material will be imported using Microsoft Word or Macromedia Dreamweaver to save mark up time.

The text and background will be in a variety of colours and photographs with at least some relevance to the subject matter will be added wherever possible to maintain interest. If possible I shall make a trip to Paros during the project (at my own expense) to absorb the atmosphere and take photographs. Animation will be used sparingly on the website if at all, and only after checking that it does not cause undue distraction.