[tei-council] Standardi[s|z]ation

[Martin Holmes]

Hi all,

One of Jens's excellent proofing reports suggests that we standardize 
spellings ending in -ise/-ize. I'm inclined to agree, and with -ise 
looking a bit beleaguered these days, I think it should be -ize. Lou 
agrees, on the ticket.

So I ran this regex to see what we have:

is((e[d|s]*)|(ing))\b

It found 1529 instances, most of which aren't relevant ("otherwise", 
"raise" etc.). But amongst those which are, they don't all seem clear 
cut to me, though. I think these are uncontroversial:

standardise
normalise
capitalise
specialise
summarise
computerise
italicise
recognise
regularise
categorise

But what about these? I feel instinctively less happy with changing 
these to z, for some reason:

harmonise
compromise
analyse
exercise
utilise

and I think these cannot be changed to z, even though, in many cases, 
variants with z are attested:

comprise
revise
devise
advise
excise

So what do your instincts tell you about these? Should we basically make 
a list of words which should use z, and put it in our style guide?

Making the changes will be a significant job, because there are 
instances of similar words in French that mustn't be changed ("utilise", 
for instance). I think it'll best be done with XSLT (which can be 
language-aware, and ignore the French) and some very precise regexes.

Cheers,
Martin