eachus@aries.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) (03/20/91)
There are two reasons for suggesting Amigas for this job. First,
there are several tools for the Amiga that support databases of
images. microFicheFiler even allows you to scan through the images if
you want. Second, not only are several (color and b&w) scanners
available and supported, and of course, video image capture is second
to none, but a lot of good image enhancement packages are available.
ASDG is the company to talk to about scanners and "The Art
Department," a program which will convert just about any image format
to any other format. If I was doing this sort of work, I would have
one "fully loaded" Amiga with a NewTek Video Toaster for image capture
and enhancement. Stock Amiga 3000s would probably suffice for
accessing and using the database.
One last note. Disk is (relatively) cheap these days, but a
collection of thousands of images is going to be BIG. Again, if I was
doing this, I would have a central database machine, probably running
Unix, where the primary considerations are amount of disk you can
attach, and ease of backup. Then the "user" machines would use
Ethernet to remote mount the database and have "only" a 100 or 200 Meg
local disk. The database machine could be whatever you have currently
such as a Sun or a MIPS or, if you want to stay a one-vendor
environment, an Amiga 3000U. In any case 400 Meg disks are probably
the smallest you should consider.
The most portable way to distribute the database would be as tar
files of GIF images on tape cartridges. If you are ambitious, it would
be possible to cut a CD-ROM or three when you are done.
--
Robert I. Eachus
with STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
use STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
function MESSAGE (TEXT: in CLEVER_IDEAS) return BETTER_IDEAS is...852028e@aucs.AcadiaU.ca (Amari M. Elammari) (03/20/91)
A friend of mine in the Ancient History department has asked for my advice
regarding a computer system for the Teaching Collection.
The curator of the Ancient History Teaching Collection at Macquarie wishes to
catalogue all the artefacts and papyri into an on-line research database. To
this end, he needs information about software and the hardware platforms under
them.
The software required basically falls into two categories:
a) A relational (or object-oriented?) database with the facility to access
and display images from a variety of sources e.g. scanned documents,
captured video (still frame) etc. This is to provide researchers with
a catalogue incorporating an image of the artefact referenced.
b) Image capture and enhancement software. The researchers wish to be able
to capture images from video as well as via scanning, and then
experiment with enhancement techniques. The database mentioned above
would reference both the original and enhanced images.
The software selected needs to be easy to use, since the average archaeologist
isn't usually too computer literate.
Can anyone out there in Netland offer advice/opinion? Maybe someone is already
doing this type of thing. Do standards exist? The History department would like
to make its resources available to whomever wishes access, so they'd like a
system which allows information transfer in some form over the net.
If you can help, please email direct to me.
Thanks in advance,
Amari
--
Amari Elammari
Acadia University P.O.BOX 1236 Wolfville, N.S. Canada BOP 1X0
Internet: 852028e@AcadiaU.CA
UUCP {uunet|watmath|utai|garfield}!cs.dal.ca!aucs!852028emarti@saturn.ucsc.edu (Marti Atkinson) (03/21/91)
>A friend of mine in the Ancient History department has asked for my advice >regarding a computer system for the Teaching Collection. >The curator of the Ancient History Teaching Collection at Macquarie wishes to >catalogue all the artefacts and papyri into an on-line research database. To >this end, he needs information about software and the hardware platforms under >them. I would recommend a MacII with a color scanner (try looking at LaCie it has been coming bundled with some nice image enhancement and compression software). You might also consider Hypercard as the front end to your images, altho there are several visual databases available... sorry I can't recommend exact names. Macs are good for people who have not had alot of previous experience with computers and are especially good for visually oriented professionals. Marti Atkinson University of Calif. at Santa Cruz marti@saturn.ucsc.edu marti@uccrls.BITNET ..!ucbvax!ucscc!saturn!marti
u3364521@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au (Lou Cavallo) (03/28/91)
G'day, I'm sorry, I lost track of the attribution... > A friend of mine in the Ancient History department has asked for my advice > regarding a computer system for the Teaching Collection. > > The curator of the Ancient History Teaching Collection at Macquarie wishes > to catalogue all the artefacts and papyri into an on-line research database. > To this end, he needs information about software and the hardware platforms > under them. Perhaps an Amiga with the AmigaVision multimedia authoring system would be suitable? AmigaVision has a built in dBase III compatible tool. AmigaVision supports CD-ROM media and has an intuitive icon based programming interface (in case that custom application building may be important). It is bundled with the Amiga 3000 currently (I believe) as well as available separately. Alternatively Superbase for the Amiga may be able to do what is needed? It is the same product (but an earlier version I think) as the IBM PC version. Disclaimer:: I have not used these products except to run a demo version of Superbase. yours truly, Lou Cavallo.