CHPOEM Collection --- a growing Chinese classics library (Macintosh HyperCard version) Author: Huangxin Wang, University of Pennsylvania Last update: 11/16/93 Current number of entries: 2019 Major changes since last update: new files including: YiJing ChineseClassic5 ftp site: ifcss.org (129.107.1.155) directory: software/mac cnd.org (132.249.229.100) directory: System Requirement: Macintosh with Chinese System 6.07, or Macintosh System 7.1 with WorldScriptII and SimplifiedChinese Script installed. The Hypercard stack containing Chinese text in GB code are the entire collection of all postings on the Chinese Poem Exchange (CHPOEM) network so far (see the the file CHPOEM.README or README in the ftp sites above). The corresponding plain GB text files can be read in the same way as you read Hua Xia Wen Zhai (HXWZ) Chinese magazine, using any softwares available on UNIX, IBM-PC and Macintosh (see the file INTRODUCTION in directory cnd-cm/ about how to read Chinese files). This collection is sure to grow as the days go. I. What's in these files? -------------------------- YiJing entire Yi-Ching text. Laozi entire text of "Laozi" (81 chapters) Confucius text of "Lun-Yu" Mencius text of "Meng Zi" ChineseZhuzi miscellaneous works of Chinese ancient philosophers in the "Zhu Zi Bai Jia" period. Currently this file contains "SunZi Bin Fa", "Gui Gu Zi", and "Da Xue". ChineseClassic1 from ChunQiu to Han and Wei dynasty ChineseClassic2 [note] from Jin4 to pre-Tang dynasty Tang1 early to middle Tang dynasty Tang2 late-Tang dynasty ChineseClassic3 Song dynasty ChineseClassic4 post-Song dynasty to Qing Dynasty including the entire collection of poems in "Hong Lou Meng" (Red Chamber's Dreams). ChineseClassic5 post-Qing dynasty to present (classical style), including the entire collection of Mao Zedong's poems, Wang Guowei's poetry commentary. ChineseModern* modern poetry Menglong "Meng Long" poems by Bei Dao and others. post-Menglong poems after the "Meng Long" style era. ChineseForeign foreign poems translated into Chinese ChineseSongs lyrics of some popular Chinese songs ChineseMisc miscellaneous collection, including "Dui-lian" (couplet), "Deng-mi" (puzzles), jokes, humors, "Chen-Yu" (idioms), etc. ChineseNews news digest compiled from HXWZ and other sources. ClassicalJokes Jokes from ancient Chinese literature ModernJokes Jokes in modern Chinese ChineseRecipes recipes of Chinese cooking II. Ordering of Records ----------------------- For ancient literature, they are arranged chronically, or roughly according to the period they are in. For modern poetry, they are arranged roughly into: (1) "Old" New Poems (such as those in the 1920s or 30s); (2) period until 1976; (3) The "real" New Poems after 1976, typified by Beidao and Shu Ting. (4) Everything else, including those by alive-and-young-and-bouncing-around poets (like Tuya). For the ChineseSongs, ChineseForeign, ChineseMisc and others, they are almost randomly ordered. I try to follow these rules throughout, but my limited knowledge may make some mistakes as silly as assuming Mao Zedong to be the first emperor of Tang dynasty (even though I hope so :-) ). Please let me know any mistakes or any suggestions for improvements. III. Naming Format ------------------ Each card in the stacks can be exported as plain GB texts. To facilitate processing the text records, each one of them has a name tagged to it: I use the following convention (similar to the convention of file names for CHPOEM posting) to label each record (even though in many cases, the label is empty): lastname-firstname.xxx xxx is 3 digits to distinguish different poems of the same author. For example, li-bai.001 li-qingzhao.002 A special one is: lastname-firstname.000 which is a record containing the information about the author. The content of a record can be in any format, as long as there is no line started with the character *. There is no restriction on the number of empty lines, or the format of the title line (first line) of a record, even though I prefer to have the following form for the title line: author name <> then an empty line after it. << >> is the Chinese punctuation of "book-name mark". If an entire stack is dumped out as a single as a single text file, the separation of record are formatted as: the beginning of a record is marked by the character * at the beginning of a line (in UNIX notation, ^\*). The ASCII string after this mark on the same line is used to label this record, but this string can be empty. With this marker, it is very convenient to write a simple program to process the entries of this collection. For example, to show the poem (i.e., record) #25 of file tang1.gb, or delete that record, or extract out that record as a single file, etc. IV. How these files are generated? ----------------------------------- It is awesome to see how vast the Chinese classical and modern literature world is. And this collection is growing at an amazing pace. Most of the source of this coolection is the CHPOEM list. The postings on the CHPOEM are spontaneous, thus organizing them together is a process similar to the database management --- random access, insert/delete, find/replace, and indexing. Thus this HyperCard stacks is designed to do such maintenance. When I receive a posting in uuencoded format on CHPOEM, I display the uuencoded mail on screen (using a terminal emulation program on Mac, such as VersaTerm), copy it, use Ed Lai's "Clipboard Magician" to decode it. Then just paste it into a new card in one of these stacks. If the posting is in hz format (enclosed by ~{ ~} or zW), the easiest on Macintosh to decode it is by using QRead DA written by me (available from ifcss.org ftp site). Using the Hypercard for this collection, the maintenance/browsing/Editing is very easy and enjoyable. For example, I can flip through the collection just like flipping books, or jump to a particular item by clicking at its title in the index. Reorganizing the card location according to the rules of ordering can be done by Cut/Paste. I can then update the index window (which list all the poems in the stacks by its label and title); or periodically, I can dump out the contents of all the stacks as plain text files (the files in this directory). The above plain GB files are readable on all computer platforms; on the other hand, the simple "database" format I define above also allows one to write a management program for processing/organization. In summary, here are some of the functionalities of the stacks: * Random access to any poems by simpling mouse-click in its title listed in the index window. * Update the index window as new records are added in. * Edit/Print/Search * Extract a record as a text file, or read from a text file into the record. * Bookmark (for you to set a certain frequent-visited record). * Rebuild stacks from, or output stacks as, plain text files specified in the format (as describe in III above). To use this stack to organize your Chinese collection (either you edit it, or download from CHPOEM-L, you can either build on your collection upon these stacks, or use the stack name "Chinese Template" to build you own collection. These HyperCard stacks are also available from the most popular Macintosh ftp site: sumex-aim.stanford.edu (36.44.0.6) in directory info-mac/Hypercard or a Sweden Macintosh ftp site: lunix.met.kth.se (130.237.16.204) in directory pub/poem or you can send three 800K disks (or two 1.4M high density disk), with returning address and postage to me: Huangxin Wang 435 Foulke Ave. Ambler, PA 19002 Currently I will be responsible for the maintenance of this collection. Any corrections, suggestions or comments can be sent to: wang@pennmess.physics.upenn.edu Have fun with the beautiful and entertaining Chinese literature, and thanks to everyone who contribute to the CHPOEM net.