[tei-council] Responses to Primary Sources #3 (up to the end of 11.3.3.1)

Lou Burnard lou.burnard at retired.ox.ac.uk
Tue Nov 29 06:14:31 EST 2011


On 27/11/11 22:26, Martin Holmes wrote:

> The example introduced with:
>
> "For example, when encountering the form ‘dedikararunt’ on an
> inscription, the editor may choose any of the following three
> possibilities..."
>
> would benefit from a little more explanation. What language is it?
> What's wrong with it? If some context were provided, the markup
> choices would make more sense to the reader.
>
> Ditto the following Italian example.
>

The sources for both of these are of course in the bibliography, but I 
have added a bit more text as you suggest :

  <p>Amongst the many examples cited in Hans Krummrey &amp; Silvio
Panciera's classic text on the editing of epigraphic inscriptions
is the following. In a late classical inscription, the form
<soCalled>dedikararunt</soCalled> is encountered.
The editor may choose any of the following three possibilities:

The <gi>surplus</gi> element may also be used to mark up interpolations,
as in the following example taken from a 13th century Italian source:


> ------------------
>
> The sentence beginning:
>
> "If the source text is completely illegible or missing..."
>
> threw me for a minute; what it should say is "If PART OF the source
> text is completely illegible or missing".
>

added "some part of"


> ------------------
>
> 11.3.2: Intro all OK with me.
>
> ------------------
>
> 11.3.2.1:
>
> ------------------
>
> This sentence has a couple of infelicities:
>
> "As might be expected, one hand may employ different renditions
> within the one writing style, for example medieval scribes often
> indicate a structural division by emboldening all the words within a
> line."
>
> First, "the one" should just be "one". Second, there's a comma
> splice. Suggest using a period after "writing style".
>


Personally I quite like "the one", but I agree that it' s a bit
idiosyncratic, I did a global sweep for uses of "the one" in this
chapter, changing all those which were synonymous with "the same" into
"the same" (about 4 cases I think)

I havent encountered the term "comma splice" for this kind of comma
abuse before. Is it another Jamaicanism?

I revised the para as follows:

"As might be expected, a single hand may also vary renditions within the
same writing style, for example medieval scribes often indicate a
structural division by emboldening all the words within a line. Such
changes should be indicated by use of the <att>rend</att> attribute, in
the same manner as ..."

While there, I also revised the preceding para:


"Where such a change is to be identified, the <att>new</att> attribute
indicates the hand applicable to the material following the
<gi>handShift</gi>. The sequence of such <gi>handShift</gi> elements
will often, but not necessarily, correspond with
the order in which the material was originally written.
Where this is not the case, the facilities described in section <ptr
target="#PH-changes"/> may be found helpful."


>
> This sentence also uses the rather jarring "the one" formulation:
>
> "In the following example there is a change of ink within the one
> hand."
>
> Suggest deletion of "the", or change to "the same".
>

agreed. changed to "a single"

>
> This sentence:
>
> "The resp attribute, by contrast, indicate the person responsible for
> deciding to apply the element carrying it to this part of the text,
> and hence has a slightly different interpretation."
>
> has two problems: first, "indicate" should clearly be "indicates".
> Second, I'm not really sure what "apply the element carrying it to
> this part of the text" means. Suggest replacing this with "the person
> responsible for deciding to apply the tag to which it applies...".
>


seems clear enough, but maybe this revision is clearer:

"The <att>resp</att> attribute, by contrast, indicates the person
responsible for deciding to mark up this part of the text
with this particular element."


> -----------------
>
> In this sentence:
>
> "However, there will be cases where it is desired to state
> responsibility..."
>
> I suggest "desirable" rather than "desired".
>

If you say so. I baulked at the complete rewrite which this excessively 
verbose section actually needs.


>
> This should end with a colon:
>
> "As members of the class att.damaged, these elements bear the
> following attributes"
>

OK



>
> This is rather odd:
>
> "att.damaged provides attributes describing the nature of any
> physical damage affecting a reading. 1.3.1 Attribute Classes"
>
> The link at the end goes to the general introduction to attribute
> classes. It should go to a place where this particular attribute
> class is discussed (presumably the current location, although I'd
> prefer it if we could suppress links to the current location, as
> we've discussed on the list). The problem appears to be in
> att.damaged, which includes this: <listRef> <ptr target="#STECAT"/>
> </listRef>
>
> The same issue appears with att.spanning below.
>

HTML rendering issue. NMP.



> ----------------
>
> In this sentence:
>
> "Note that in this example the spanTo element points to the next pb
> element rather than to an inserted anchor element, since the whole of
> the leaf (the text between the two pb elements has sustained
> damage."
>
> a closing parenthesis should be inserted after "elements".
>

revised to:


"Note that in this example the <att>spanTo</att> element points to the
next <gi>pb</gi> element rather than to an inserted <gi>anchor</gi> 
element, since it is the whole of the leaf (the text between the two 
<gi>pb</gi> elements) which  has sustained  damage."


> ---------------
>
> This sentence has no final punctuation. It should be either a period
> or a colon:
>
> "In this (imaginary) text of Fitzgerald's translation from Omar
> Khayam, water damage has affected an area covering parts of several
> lines "
>

OK



>
> This sentence is very difficult to parse:
>
> "Where, as here, several phenomena of illegibility and conjecture all
> result from the one cause, an area of damage to the text — rubbing at
> various points — which is not continuous in the text, affecting it at
> irregular points, the join element may be used to indicate which
> tagged features are part of the same physical phenomenon. "
>
> Suggest rephrasing in multiple sentences, like this:
>
> "Here, several phenomena of illegibility and conjecture all result
> from a single cause: an area of damage to the text caused by rubbing
> at various points. The damage is not continuous, and affects the
> text at irregular points. In cases such as this, the join element may
> be used to indicate which tagged features are part of the same
> physical phenomenon."
>

OK


>
> In this sentence, the second comma should not be there:
>
> "Returning to the Eddic example above, an encoder less confident in
> the daga reading, may indicate this as follows: "

OK. Also changed "may" to "might"

>
> ----------------
>
> In this section, I can't figure out how "msm" relates to Finnur
> Jónsson:
>
> [quote] Alternatively, the transcriber may not feel able to read the
> last three letters of daga but may wish to supply them by
> conjecture. Note the use of the resp attribute to assign the
> conjecture to Finnur Jónsson:
>
> um aldr d<supplied reason="rubbing" resp="#msm">aga</supplied>
> yndisniota [/quote]
>
> Surely it should be @resp="#fj"? (I think, reading on, that this is a
> copy-paste error from the following example, where #msm is a
> witness.)

Well OK, I've changed to #finjon. This was probably an attempt to reduce 
the number of validation errors signalled because a cross ref is not 
satisfied (strickly speaking we should add some element with an xml:id 
of "finjon" somewhere)

>
> In this sentence:
>
> "In the following imaginary example, there is a smoke-damaged part
> within which two stretches can be read with some difficulty, and
> third stretch which cannot be read at all: "
>
> there needs to be an additional "a" before "third stretch".
>

OK. And there now is.





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