Durham's handlists tend to be highly detailed item level listings, done without any authority system or house style, only the most recent of which had been word processed.  This has precluded most automation of the markup process, although awk (a program that comes with UNIX (and LINUX) which treats text files like a database) has been useful for some sequences.  The results are highly unsatisfactory as electronic texts, stretch to (and beyond) the limits of EAD, and do not display the consistency that might be desired from using EAD, but nevertheless provide what was required of the project concerned (making existing lists available online) and establishes the skeleton which much future authority work can flesh out.

Conversion has started with a basic keying of the text, then a combined proof reading and markup using WordPerfect SGML with macros on ASCII text which is saved and parsed as SGML.  While fine for conversion, WordPerfect does not deal reliably with finished EAD SGML files, so these are at present worked on using EMACS in PSGML mode with the NSGMLS parser, although development is currently underway on using Adobe Framemaker+SGML as the means of editing existing documents.  As mentioned, the lack of authority forms, etc., has meant leaving aside questions of indexing, etc., at present (the problem lying with the data rather than EAD).  The handlists are made available via Dynatext/Dynaweb etc, as indicated above ( http://flambard.dur.ac.uk:6336/ )