[tei-council] SV: Witness proposal

[Lou Burnard]

A hasty English translation, not yet checked by Goto, is at

http://www.tei-c.org/Drafts/witnessPart/index.xml?style=printable

My own comments will follow...


Dot Porter wrote:
> Hi Matthew and council,
> 
> On 3/22/07, Matthew James Driscoll <mjd at hum.ku.dk> wrote:
>> In terms of revamping <witness>, which was never a terribly sophisticated
>> element, this proposal makes perfect sense. It is not clear to me, 
>> however,
>> whether the newly redefined <witness> element is intended as an 
>> alternative
>> to <msDescription> or whether there are situations in which one would use
>> both. Neither appeals much to me, I must say, especially as I can't 
>> see that
>> what is being proposed can't be done with <msDescription> as it is.
> 
> This is my concern as well. Since I can't read French, I was hoping
> that the proposal includes some reasoning for basically placing
> <msDescription> in <witness>, rather just using <msDescription>
> (multiple instances, if need be) and linking them to the <witness>es.
> 
> Thanks,
> Dot
> 
> The
>> original idea behind <msDescription>, in any case, was very much that it
>> should be able to be used for more than just cataloguing (our 
>> insistence on
>> this was what led to the bulk of the disagreements with "TEI-MMSS"), 
>> and it
>> was indeed my understanding that <witList> and <witness> were now to be
>> deprecated as redundant. If there are things which Gautier, representing
>> German, Italian and French practice, genuinely can't do using the current
>> <msDescription> mechanism it would be far more useful, it seems to me, 
>> for
>> us to try and adapt the existing mechanism, rather than coming up with a
>> parallel one.
>>
>> Looking at his proposal, the chief lack seems to be a means of indicating
>> the sigla, for which he proposes a new <sigil> element; these can easily
>> appear within <msIdentifier> as <altIdentifier>, which takes a type
>> attribute. Otherwise the elements are largely from the <msDescription>
>> module, suggesting that perhaps we aren't so far off the mark after all.
>>
>> Matthew
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
>> Fra: Lou Burnard [mailto:lou.burnard at computing-services.oxford.ac.uk]
>> Sendt: 22 March 2007 00:22
>> Til: Matthew James Driscoll; TEI Council; gotpoupeau at infonie.fr
>> Emne: Witness proposal
>>
>> In early november last year, Gautier Poupeau whom several of you will
>> recall from his presentation at the Members meeting, sent me a document
>> outlining a proposal to address the inconsistency currently subsisting
>> in the Guidelines about how manuscript (or print) witnesses should be
>> documented.  I owe him, and the Council, a major apology for having not
>> done anything with it -- it simply got mislaid and then forgotten.
>> Fortunately, he's a persevering kind of chap, and I have now recovered
>> the draft and placed it somewhere you can see it, viz:
>>
>>  http://www.tei-c.org/Drafts/witnessPart/proposal-witness.xml
>>
>> It's in French, so I will summarize briefly the proposal here (I will
>> also translate the document fully if so requested)
>>
>> * create a new class called model.witnessPart. which is a subclass of
>> model.phrasel; use this class in the content model of <witness>
>> * add to this class a number of elements currently specific to
>> msDescription, specifically:
>>    origDate, material, physDesc, seal, dimensions,
>> filiation,msIdentifier, msContents, rubric;
>> * re-introduce the "sigil" attribute as a new <sigil> element
>> * add a "class" attribute to <witness>
>>
>> The suggestion is based on Gautier's extensive experience in adapting
>> TEI to the description of cartularies and similar documents, with due
>> regard to practice in German, Italian, and French collections.
>>
>> I think the work is sufficiently straightforward to do quite quickly
>> (i.e. it can be done for P5); I also suspect that it would be a very
>> smart political move to be seen to be doing something in this area.
>>
>> Initial comments?
>>
>> (It occurs to me also that this might be something the newly revived mss
>> SIG would like to kick around -- but that could happen independently of
>> plumbing his suggestion into P5)
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> 
>