[tei-council] genetic draft -- responses to responses, pt. 1

[Lou Burnard]

On 03/09/11 23:49, Brett Barney wrote:
>

> I've reviewed the Whitman manuscript images and reprocessed the ones that
> seemed would benefit. In the case of Fig. 4, I've located and processed a
> couple of alternative images that might be better (clearer, perhaps more
> compact). The zip package is available at
> http://www.whitmanarchive.org/downloads/genetic_figures.zip

That's really helpful -- many thanks Brett (and Ken)!

Still need some more better examples though...


>>>> "Alternatively, if the transcription is intended to do no more than
>>>> represent the physicality of the document itself . . . ."
>>>
>>> Several things about this phrase puzzle me. Why "no more than"? The
> idea
>>> that a transcription might represent physicality strikes me as at least
>>> recondite--I'm not sure what to make of it without some unpacking

Maybe "prioritize" would be better than "do no more than"?

>
> Here's the best I could come up with at the moment: "Alternatively, if the
> transcription is intended to represent the physical arrangement of the
> __________ [text? inscribed marks? writing?]"

thinking again, have now modified this to

... is intended to prioritize representation of the process by which the 
document came to take its present form over representation of the final text


>
>>> What I'm starting to worry about,
>>> I think, is that maybe "surface" is being used for both physical
> surfaces
>>> and the ones created by the encoder.
>>
>> The encoder cannot create surfaces so this is definitely misleading.
>
> To my mind, the whole way<surface>  is discussed in chapter 11 conveys the
> idea that it's an arbitrary space (constructed by the encoder). The
> definition
> pretty much says as much, I think: "<surface>  defines a written surface in
> terms of a rectangular coordinate space, optionally grouping one or more
> graphic representations of that space, and rectangular zones of interest
> within it." The distinction between surfaces that exist in reality and
> those
> that are constructed by the encoder would seem a key to the way<surface>
> is used in regard to Fig. 2, the two-page spread. Without a virtual
> conception
> of surface, I have a hard time making sense out of a two-page spread that
> constitutes a single surface. I could be missing some nuance, though.
>
>>> For this particular definition,
>>> though, I'm now thinking that it's probably not helpful (even if it is
>>> possible) to raise the issue of when the surfaces were created. Why
> does it
>>> matter?

You're right about <surface> being "created" by the encoder: apologies 
for the misleading comment. The only reason for raising the time 
dimension at all was to explain why a "patch" is not the same as a 
surface' (where a surface' is the thing that a <surface> is representing)

>>
>> How's this as a new definition:
>>
>> "<patch>   a part of a surface which was originally physically distinct
>> but was combined with it at some time prior to some or all of the
>> writing on the surface"
>
> That seems OK, as long as it allows everything people think it should. The
> specific case I have in mind is collage-type manuscripts. If I paste up a
> document from, say, a draft written on the top 1/3 of an A4 sheet and a
> textual snippet that I've written on a sticky note, does the fact that I
> haven't written anything new mean that the sticky isn't a patch? If so, I
> don't have a complaint; I'm just trying to clear up the intended scope of
> the element.
>

Your definition, and interpretation, seem fine to me.