[tei-council] pb, lb

[Laurent Romary]

I would definitely support this!
Laurent

Le 28 sept. 07 à 12:10, Lou Burnard a écrit :

> Here is a small essay on this topic, with a suggestion at the end.
>
> Most milestone units indicate a change of state of some kind. The
> default assumption is that the old state ceases to apply and the new
> state starts to apply at the point the milestone tag is inserted in  
> the
> text. Consequently if for some state (say "being on page 42") there is
> no milestone, you are not yet in that state. This is the rationale for
> saying that you must put a <pb> before the material on page 42, not
> after it.
>
> There is another interpretation of milestones, which is that they are
> solely there to mark points (like <anchor>s). In this sense, the <lb/>
> for example doesn't really mark a change of state (from "being on this
> line" to "being on a different line") but simply the notional point
> between the two lines. But this looks like sophistry to me.
>
> I think there are two real usage issues that need to be addressed
> somehow. The first is that *some* milestone changes imply changes in
> others Changing from one page to the next implies of necessity  
> changing
> from one line to the next and (if I am doing columns) one column to  
> the
> next. So there is an implicit hierarchy in which inserting a <pb/>
> notionally inserts also a <lb/> and a <cb/> at the same point, just as
> inserting a <cb/> implies inserting an <lb/> : you just cannot have a
> column or a line which spans a page break, without doing violence  
> to the
> definition of what "column" or "line" means.
>
> Note that this is by no means true of all milestones -- indeed the  
> main
> reason for introducing milestones is precisely to allow for units  
> which
> do not behave in this way. But, I contend, it *is* true of the three
> mentioned here, which are also, probably, the three most frequently  
> used!
>
> If you grant the possibility of "implicit" milestones (and you can of
> course say "this is XML: we don't do minimization") then you also have
> to confront the fact that some milestones are implicit in the  
> deployment
> of other elements. For example, part of the definition of <p> or <l>
> (but not, I suggest, <item> or <div> ) is that they have an implied
> <lb/> at their beginning. I am not, of course, talking about how we  
> want
> to render the things, I am talking about how we recognize them. If we
> found in our text something which had other paragraph-like properties,
> but didn't start a new line, we'd probably have difficulty agreeing  
> that
> it was a paragraph (in fact, I'm having difficulties thinking how else
> we'd identify it at all). If we are marking up a poem, there is  
> probably
> an implicit <lb/> following each <l> -- so that when a metrical line
> gets fractured by the typography, we can happily insert just one <lb/>
> solely at that point.
>
> The trouble is that we have no way, currently, of formally stating  
> these
> rules of interdependence or implication between elements (assuming,
> indeed, that you think they are useful). We cannot easily record  
> that a
> an occurrence of milestone type x implies an occurrence of  
> milestone y,
> nor that the presence of element a implies an occurrence of  
> milestone x.
> And, as I suggested above, you may plausibly say "tough: we don't  
> do tag
> minimization" and leave it at that.
>
> Since however <pb> <lb> and <cb> are so widely (and inconsistently)
> used, I can't help wondering whether some tighter usage rules for  
> these
> special cased milestones only -- along the lines indicated above --
> might not help the community. What do you think?
>
>
>
>
> Dan O'Donnell wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, 2007-26-09 at 12:30 +0200, Matthew James Driscoll wrote:
>>> I've always maintained that the "b" stood for "boundary", rather  
>>> than
>>> "break" (an idea I believe I got from Lou originally), and  
>>> insisted that
>>> they be put at the front of the thing in question -- don't make  
>>> no sense
>>> otherwise.
>>
>> I think the impetus to put them at the end comes from html:lb usage.
>>
>>> Matthew
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Lou Burnard [mailto:lou.burnard at oucs.ox.ac.uk]
>>> Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2007 8:34 PM
>>> To: tei-council at lists.village.Virginia.EDU
>>> Subject: Re: [tei-council] pb, lb
>>>
>>> Dan O'Donnell wrote:
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> This is probably silly, but I've been teaching a student research
>>>> assistant P5 and the issue came up.
>>>>
>>>> Was there not discussion some time ago of changing the name of  
>>>> pb and lb
>>>> from page break and line break to page begin and line begin?
>>> No discussion about changing the name of the element sfaik. But
>>> agreement to clarify that th "b" should be understood as implying  
>>> you
>>> put the thing at the "beginning"
>>>>  The
>>>> preferred convention is to put milestones at the beginnings of  
>>>> spans
>>>> they involve (e.g. handShift), right?
>>>>
>>>>
>>> krekt. " By convention, pb/
>>> <http://tei.oucs.ox.ac.uk/P5/Guidelines-web/en/html/ref-pb.html>
>>> elements should appear at the start of the page to which they  
>>> refer." is
>>> what it says in the Good Book.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> tei-council mailing list
>>> tei-council at lists.village.Virginia.EDU
>>> http://lists.village.Virginia.EDU/mailman/listinfo/tei-council
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> tei-council mailing list
>>> tei-council at lists.village.Virginia.EDU
>>> http://lists.village.Virginia.EDU/mailman/listinfo/tei-council
>
> _______________________________________________
> tei-council mailing list
> tei-council at lists.village.Virginia.EDU
> http://lists.village.Virginia.EDU/mailman/listinfo/tei-council