[tei-council] floatingText

[Kevin Hawkins]

Martin (Mueller),

While I am not familiar with the works you cite, I see no reason why you 
could not use <floatingText> in these cases, both according to the 
current definition of the <floatingText> element in P5 and according to 
our proposed revision to the last paragraph in section 4.3.2.  (Note: 
for the latest version of the proposed revision, see my email from 
2011-04-12 with the subject line "FR 3106829 on <quote> and 
<floatingText> (was Re: (no	subject))")

More specifically, the current proposed revision to section 4.3.2 would 
never prevent you from using floatingText, though it implies that you 
would only use it this element cases where there was internal tagging 
needed.  That is, we don't recommend its use in cases where it is not 
warranted by XML syntax, though you are welcome to use it in all such 
situations.  Perhaps this needs to be made more explicit.

It seems that you agree that it is simpler not to try to define or ask 
people to determine what counts as an "interruption", and I don't think 
any of us at this point having this "lingering sense" that you speak of. 
  If anything, some may have a lingering sense that you should not use 
<floatingText> for *every* quotation, as some may be tempted to do.  I 
don't recall anyone caring whether the floating text seems to 
"interrupt" the main text.

--Kevin

On 4/12/11 10:13 PM, Martin Mueller wrote:

[. . .]

> On the other hand, there may be a lingering sense that floatingText should
> only be used if there is some more substantive difference between the
> surrounding text and the text that "interrupts" it. A letter written by
> somebody else or a will is one thing; a character bursting into song is
> another.  But on the purely formal definition any of the following
> encodings would be OK:
>
> 1. Cherubino's aria could be encoded as lg elements wrapped in lg
> elements. Alternately, I could wrap the aria in floatingText to articulate
> the change of medium.
>
> 2. In the Countess's Dove sono, I could model the aria itself as lg
> elements. Or I could wrap her formal recitative and aria in floatingText
> to articulate the transition from secco recitative.
>
> 3. In an ensemble involving a text divided into stanzas, with speaker
> changes distributed across l or lg elements, I must use floatingText
> because it is the only way of capturing the formal coherence of the
> ensemble. Lou suggested a "speech group" element to capture such
> situations, but if we accept a purely formal definition of floatingText,
> you may not need a speech group element.
>
> So I'd like to know what, if anything, would be wrong with encoding any of
> these examples as floatingText.  What would be borderline or clearly wrong
> ways of using floatingText?  This question suggests a Fawlty Towers
> approach to examples, but with regard to difficult elements users might
> benefit from examples that are clearly OK, clearly wrong, or in the
> marshland where a lot of encoding takes place.