[tei-council] <timeline> without timing information?

[James Cummings]

Hi all,

I agree with Lou here, this is showing how the utterances are 
ordered and I've never found it confusing.  The problem comes 
from the use of the phrase 'specific timing information' which 
does, as Martin points out, seem to imply that there should be 
specific time-stamps given.  I'd suggest adding the timing 
information as suggested by Martin, but then copying the current 
example after it and saying something like "If only the ordering 
or sequencing of utterances is needed, then specific timing 
information does not need to be provided." And having the current 
example after that.

-James


On 12/01/13 22:09, Lou Burnard wrote:
> While I've no objection to adding some more detail to the example as
> Martin suggests, I must protest at the suggestion that it is currently
> incoherent. The point which is not perhaps being made clearly enough
> here is that simply aligning bits of a dialog with distinct <when>
> elements provides some kind of temporal ordering for them, since <when>s
> are always ordered within a <timeline>, even in the absence of
> additional timing information. Whereas the synchronization attributes
> just allow you to say that events are um synchronous, without saying
> anything about the order in which they occur
>
>
> On 01/01/13 19:07, Martin Holmes wrote:
>> Take a look at this block from Chapter 8:
>>
>> --------------------
>> Where the whole of one or another utterance is to be synchronized, the
>> start and end attributes may be used:
>>
>> <u who="#tom">I used to smoke <anchor xml:id="TS-p10"/> a lot more than this
>> <anchor xml:id="TS-p20"/>but I never inhaled the smoke</u>
>> <u start="#TS-p10" end="#TS-p20" who="#bob">You used to smoke</u>
>>
>> [...]in
>>
>> If synchronization with specific timing information is required, a
>> timeline must be included:
>>
>> <timeline origin="#TS-t01">
>>     <when xml:id="TS-t01"/>
>>     <when xml:id="TS-t02"/>
>> </timeline>
>> <u who="#tom">I used to smoke
>> <anchor synch="#TS-t01"/>a lot more than this
>> <anchor synch="#TS-t02"/>but I never inhaled the smoke</u>
>> <u who="#bob">
>>     <anchor synch="#TS-t01"/>You used to smoke<anchor synch="#TS-t02"/>
>> </u>
>> -----------------
>>
>> The expanded version with <timeline> is introduced explicitly to show
>> "specific timing information", but it doesn't seem to do so; there's no
>> @absolute or @interval, and as far as I can see, the addition of
>> <timeline> provides no benefit to the encoding. I think this is a simple
>> omission, which could be remedied by adding appropriate timing info,
>> like this:
>>
>>
>> <timeline origin="#TS-t01" unit="s">
>>     <when xml:id="TS-t01" absolute="15:33:01Z"/>
>>     <when xml:id="TS-t02" interval="2.5" since="#TS-t01"/>
>> </timeline>
>> <u who="#tom">I used to smoke
>> <anchor synch="#TS-t01"/>a lot more than this
>> <anchor synch="#TS-t02"/>but I never inhaled the smoke</u>
>> <u who="#bob">
>>     <anchor synch="#TS-t01"/>You used to smoke<anchor synch="#TS-t02"/>
>> </u>
>>
>> Have I misunderstood, or should I go ahead and make this change?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Martin
>


-- 
Dr James Cummings, James.Cummings at it.ox.ac.uk
Academic IT Services, University of Oxford