[tei-council] <handDesc> and <handList>

[David J Birnbaum]

Dear Council,

This sounds consistent with the general strategy in our manuscript 
description resources of providing structured and unstructured (or, more 
accurately, loosely constrained) alternatives.

Best,

David

Lou Burnard wrote:
> 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