[tei-council] facsimile odd -- what is a facsimile?

[Arianna Ciula]

Lou Burnard wrote:
> In fact, it seems to me the relationship between a transcription of a 
> source and the original is almost identical to the relationship between 
> a facsimile of it and the original. One translates a reading letter by 
> letter, and the other translates a reading dot by dot, but they are both 
> readings and as such I would like to give them the same ontological 
> standing in my encoding.

I fully agree with this and therefore with the proposal of having a 
no-mainly-textual representation encoded as the equivalent of <text> 
rather than metadata, since the tei header will be useful to encode the 
description of this image-based representation instead.
I am not sure <facsimile> is the best term, but can't suggest anything 
better to represent a more general 'material' alternative to a textual 
edition.

Arianna

> 
> In addition to this philosophical argument, let us not forget that for 
> every one TEI-encoded digital text out there, there are probably a 
> thousand digital facsimiles. Surely the TEI ought to be offering a way 
> of encoding digital facsimile editions as well as digital 
> transcriptions? There are quite a few places where the TEI Header is 
> used to stock metadata about both kinds of digital object. Wouldn't it 
> be nice to offer a way of growing one kind into the other without doing 
> violence to the basic TEI model?
> 
> If we are going to have markup which describes the page images 
> themselves, as digital objects, then the set of page images constituting 
> a work isa kind of "text" itself and should be treated as such. In 
> short: my proposal is
> a) add a new element <facsimile> (or better word if we can think of one)
> b) change the content model of <TEI> and of <group> to permit 
> (text|facsimile) where they currently permit <text>
> 
> Note that I am not proposing a class model.textLike because I cannot 
> think of any other kind of thing that might go in there -- I'd suggest 
> that talking books, if we want to digitize them, are another form of 
> facsimile.
> 
> 
> 
> DP: I'd
>> say that <pg> does belong in sourceDesc, however this doesn't mean it
>> doesn't also make sense to have it at the same level as <text>.
>> Perhaps it should be allowed in both places? Similar to msDescription,
>> where you can have them both in the header and in the body.
>>
> 
> I can see why the "bung em in the header" policy is convenient, for 
> example  in the case where you just have a few page images to illustrate 
> particularly vexing parts of your manuscript, so I am ready to concede 
> this as a possibility. But I still think it's Wrong with a capital R.
> 
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-- 
Dr Arianna Ciula
Research Associate
Centre for Computing in the Humanities
King's College London
Strand
London WC2R 2LS (UK)
Tel: +44 (0)20 78481945
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/cch