[tei-council] [Fwd: [ tei-Feature Requests-2909766 ] make <del> and <add> (etc) dateable]

[James Cummings]

Hiya,

I think I'm very slightly against this because of exactly the point 
Sebastian later made about using @when to record when we decided 
something.  Even if in the case of add/del we were recording the date at 
which we thought the addition/deletion took place, we already have 
mechanisms in place to do this. (timeline being one of them)  Also, 
where does it stop?  Surely any act of scribal interaction with a 
document could be similarly time coded? Then any act of editorial 
interpretation.... then every act of encoding of the document.  Does it 
really get us anywhere?  Technically someone could already do that with 
a TEI document (with a stand-off solution being the easiest to implement).

Surely this is a concern in genetic editing? Has the group of people 
working on the Genetic ODD added anything additional to deal with 
time/order or authorial interventions?  If so, it would make sense to 
examine that before deciding on this.

If I was too lazy to use timeline or similar though I'd probably just 
do: <add><date notAfter="1802"/>foo</add>.  While a little bit 
incorrect, probably, it does embed a date inside the add and so work for 
purposes of processing.

-James

Laurent Romary wrote:
> I add my vote, with the word of caution that this should probably not  
> be extended to any element taken at randon in the TEI (cf. the <death  
> when> (counter-)example). The ad/del combinaiton with when is  
> straightforward, though.
> Laurent (from Hong Kong...)
> 
>>> Initial Comment:
>>> I am using <del> and <add> to mark changes in a born-digital  
>>> document, and I know the exact date of the additions and deletions.  
>>> It seems obvious to me that I should be able to say <add  
>>> when="2009-11-01">, of course</add>. Can we just add these elements  
>>> to the dateable class?
>>> Message:
>>> Slippery slope warning. The date is presumably unambiguously always  
>>> the
>>> date that the addition or deletion was made, rather than the date  
>>> that it
>>> was identified by the encoder? So I can say <add
>>> notAfter="1802">wibble</add> for an addition which I think was made  
>>> before
>>> 1802. Of course some bright spark will now ask for the ability to  
>>> record an
>>> addition that was (prior to evidence uncovered in 1904) believed to  
>>> be 19th
>>> century, but which is actually much older.