[tei-council] handy

[Lou Burnard]

Arianna Ciula wrote:
>
>
> Lou Burnard wrote:
>> What I've done therefore is make <handNote> into a kind of "core" 
>> element, which can be used in either of these two container elements. 
>> It is declared in the header module, but it's completely 
>> inaccessible/invisible unless you also load one or other of the PH or 
>> MS modules. Whichever you load then brings in the appropriate 
>> container element for you. And since you only ever access a 
>> <handNote> by means of its xml:id value it matters not a jot which 
>> container you get it from.
>
> I see, but then if you load both, do we recommend where is it better 
> to define the hands? within the manuscript description or within the 
> profile description?
>

I think this depends what your goals are. If you only want to list the 
hands so that you can use the @hand attribute (or the @new) attribute in 
PH, then you will be using a <handNotes> element in profile desc. If you 
are primarily doing a full blown ms description/cataloguing  job, then 
you will want to use the <handDesc> in msdesc. It's not impossible that 
you might want to combine a lightweight <msDesc>  with a very detailed 
set of <handNotes> (if you are doing research into handwriting for 
example) so having two places isn't as strange as at first it appears. 
And I do think that saying "tough, you just have to do a full msDesc, 
even if you're only interested in the hands" is not the right answer.