[tei-council] Re: handDesc and handList

Lou Burnard lou.burnard at computing-services.oxford.ac.uk
Wed Aug 1 10:11:39 EDT 2007


We certainly had a conversation about the duplication between handList 
and handDesc, which is why I wished to put them on the agenda.

At first glance, it's true that you could use <handDesc> in place of 
<handList>, and <handNote> in place of <hand>. However, as currently 
written, the spec for the handDesc/Note combination permits you to do 
all sorts of vague things that you can't do with the handList/hand pair. 
For example, the handDesc could just say "there are six hands in this 
ms, and I can only read one of them" (without saying which or supplying 
anything further). And there's no requirement that a handNote relate to 
a single hand, as I read the definition: it could summarise your 
thoughts on all the different varieties of say secretary hand you've 
detected in the ms.

So my suggestion would be that we change the content model of <handDesc> 
to permit (a single) <handList> as a child in addition to (or in place 
of) <p> or <handNote>


This means that those wishing to indulge in computational codicology 
(you know who you are) can do so, while permitting those who just want 
to witter on (ditto) to do that too. :-)



. Matthew James Driscoll wrote:
> I may be wrong (or indulging in wishful thinking), but I recall (albeit
> vaguely, as one does) that we had already decided that there was no longer
> any real justification for using <handList> and <hand>, since they didn't do
> anything that couldn't be done with <handDesc> and <handNote>. Does anyone
> else remember this?
> 
> Matthew
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: tei-council-bounces at lists.village.Virginia.EDU
> [mailto:tei-council-bounces at lists.village.Virginia.EDU] On Behalf Of Lou
> Burnard
> Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 5:56 PM
> To: Christian Wittern
> Cc: TEI Council
> Subject: Re: [tei-council] next telecon 2007-08-02 at 1200 UTC
> 
> Could we discuss the issue Elena Pierazzo has just raised on the Council
> list about the overlap between <handDesc> and <handList>?
> 
> I think it would be a shame to remove <handList> : my tentative proposal
> would be to add it as an optional element within <handDesc>, removing it
> from model.profileDescPart. This would mean you couldnt do it without
> including msDesc module but as Elena suggests this may not be such an
> imposition.
> 
> (Incidentally, I just noticed that handShift is also a member of
> model.profileDescPart: this is definitely bonkers, so I am removing it)
> 
> 
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