[tei-council] Certainty within milestoneLike

[Kevin Hawkins]

Gabby and all,

On 7/31/2012 10:45 AM, Gabriel BODARD wrote:
> TRANSCRIPTIONAL (caesura, handShift, pause, redo, shift, undo, move):
> these elements involve aspects of the transcription of the text and so
> are potentially subject to interpretation, uncertainty or other
> qualification. For consistency's sake, you might argue that these should
> be treated like the milestone elements too.

I can imagine uncertainty over where exactly a shift in hand 
(<handShift/>) occurs or whether a pause (<pause/>) occurs at all.  So I 
treat these like the milestone elements.

> TRANSCRIPTIONAL, SPANNING (addSpan, anchor, damageSpan, delSpan,
> lacunaEnd, lacunaStart, witEnd, witStart): these are also
> transcriptional elements, but since they all mark the beginning and end
> of ranges or spans, there may be less features of such elements that are
> subject to interpretation, so the argument for allowing certLike inside
> them may be weaker. I am agnostic.

If you use <addSpan/> instead of <add> or <delSpan/> instead of <del/> 
to get around an overlapping hierarchy problem, you could have a 
situation where, when transcribing a manuscript, you can't tell exactly 
which text was added or deleted.  So I would treat these like the 
milestone elements.

> LINKING (alt, link): in principle these are not transcriptional but
> stand-off elements, so probably don't need certLike in any event. (Cf.
> however<join>, which is already only pseudo-empty.)
>
> ODD (attRef, catRef, classRef, elementRef, equiv, macroRef, specDesc,
> specGrpRef): obviously not. These should remain empty.
>
> FS (binary, default, fsdLink, iff, numeric, symbol, then, when):
> presumably not either, although I don't pretend to have any idea what FS
> is about.
>
> ADMIN (graphic, ptr, variantEncoding, refState): for want of a better
> label--these elements are not really transcription but rather support
> the markup, so I suspect they don't need certLike at all.

You sometimes use <ptr/> to mark sigla, and I suppose there might be old 
printed books where it's unclear whether a smudge is a siglum or, say, a 
quotation mark.  But I'm willing to let this go until someone raises it 
as an issue.

> DICTIONARIES (oRef, pRef): my instinct is to say these don't either, but
> is this module ever used to transcribe existing print dictionaries, and
> so subject to the sorts of uncertainty that other transcription elements
> are? If so, then yes, they deserve in as much as TRANSCRIPTIONAL (above) do.

The dictionaries chapter used to be named "print dictionaries" but was 
renamed in order to suppport encoding of born-digital dictionaries.  I 
strongly suspect these elements predate the renaming, and even if they 
don't, we can't really say that no one uses these in encoding print 
dictionaries.  I can imagine uncertainty about the placement of these 
elements when transcribing an old dictionary, so I vote to treat like 
the milestone elements.

--Kevin