[tei-council] Guidelines confusion over damage/unclear?

[David Sewell]

In coming up with an example of <unclear> for the ref page, I noticed
that the Guidelines and the reference page for <unclear> offer somewhat
contradictory advice.

In 11.5.1, "Damage, Illegibility, and Supplied Text"

  http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/PH.html#PHDA

where a passage from the Elder Edda is used as an example, this advice
is given about using <unclear> within <damage>:

  If it is desired to supply more information about the kind of damage, it
  is also possible to nest an <unclear> element within the <damage>
  element:
     um aldr d<damage agent="rubbing">
      <unclear>aga</unclear>
     </damage> yndisniota

However, <unclear> itself can take @agent, and in the reference section

   http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/ref-unclear.html

@agent is indicated for "Where the difficulty in transcription arises
from damage, categorizes the cause of the damage, if it can be
identified", with sample values of "rubbing", "mildew", and "smoke".

Which suggests that this tagging of the Guidelines example would do
just as well:

   um aldr d<unclear reason="damage" agent="rubbing">aga</unclear>
   yndisniota

with no <damage> tag needed.

Is this just a case of "there's more than one way to do it", or should
the Guidelines language at 11.5.1 be revised?

David

-- 
David Sewell, Editorial and Technical Manager
ROTUNDA, The University of Virginia Press
PO Box 801079, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4318 USA
Courier: 310 Old Ivy Way, Suite 302, Charlottesville VA 22903
Email: dsewell at virginia.edu   Tel: +1 434 924 9973
Web: http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/