[tei-council] [Fwd: and then there's the TBOs question]

[Lou Burnard]

Syd Bauman wrote:
>> The difference between e.g. title and docTitle is that the former
>> is what the catalogue says and the latter what the titlepage says.
>> They may not be the same.
> 
> But you're selling <title> short. It is already overloaded, as it
> were. It may represent what the catalogue says (e.g., when in
> <biblStruct>), it may represent the title I dreamed up for my digital
> edition (when in TEI/teiHeader/fileDesc/titleStmt), it may represent
> a short title used as reference, or it may represent how a title
> appeared in the source running prose, complete with other markup:
> 
>   <p>I saw my cousin lying in bed. He was reading <title>And to My
>   <lb/>Nephew Albert: I Leave the Island
>   <choice><sic>That</sic><corr>What</corr></choice> I Won Off Fatty
>   Hagan <lb/>in a Poker Game</title>, a novel which, even in
>   paperback ...

Is this a made-up example?

> 
> I am just wondering aloud if we can pile one more use onto <title>:
> the title as it appears on the title page when a descendant of
> <titlePage>. Thus allowing us to eliminate <docTitle>.

But why would this be a good idea? The distinction between docTitle and 
title (vel sim) is clear and useful and I see no need to eliminate it.

> 
> The disadvantage I see with this particular suggestion is that it is
> conceivable, if unlikely, that a title page contains titles of other
> works, e.g. in an advertisement or as a part of the document title.

Actually, no that happens a lot. as in

<docTitle>Animadversions on <title>Paradise Lost</title></docTitle>

or

<docAuthor>by the author of <title>Witterings</title></docAuthor>

> If we eliminate <docTitle> it may be hard to differentiate those.
> (But there are other ways of doing this -- a particular value of
> type= or a new doc= attribute, e.g.)

It ain't broke. Stop trying to fix it.