[tei-council] divliminality

[Kevin Hawkins]

Change:

What's in it for me? Well nothing much, to be honest, unless of course 
you are the sort of person who enjoys marking up texts in TEI. And of 
course, we will be maintaining (and prominently displaying) a list of 
Top Taggers so if you're looking for kudos, you'll get that too.

to:

Thank you in advance for helping us clarify what the Guidelines say 
about how to encode the components of texts which make up the divLiminal 
class.

--Kevin

On 10/19/13 5:29 PM, Lou Burnard wrote:
> Thanks for the comments Kevin.  Your point about adding something about
> the real benefits of contribution is a good one: care to suggest some
> wording?
>
>
>
> On 18/10/13 20:03, Kevin Hawkins wrote:
>> I think Lou was originally asking for suggestions on revising his email.
>>     A few notes interspersed below ...
>>
>> On 10/17/13 11:19 AM, Lou Burnard wrote:
>>> TAKE THE TEI DIV/LIMINAL/ TAGGING CHALLENGE!
>>>
>>> Everyone knows how to tag TEI texts. You mark paragraphs, lists, line of
>>> verse, and headings, wrapped up in divisions, wrapped up in texts. No
>>> problem. But there's an interesting challenge lurking at the edges of
>>> most sub-divisions of most texts printed before about 1800, when
>>> printing conventions were in the process of being stabilised. What
>>> exactly /is/ that thing?
>> The phrase "that thing" is awkward here because it doesn't have a clear
>> antecedent.  Only when you read on does the reader realize that you're
>> referring to "the challenge" ... or various instances of it.
>>
>> It can't be a heading -- we already had one of
>>> them. It might be a salutation? Or maybe a dateline? No, it's an
>>> epigraph! .
>> Okay, now it's becoming clear that, with the confusing sentence above,
>> this constitutes someone's train of thought.  It needs to be set off
>> somehow to make this clear.
>>
>> Hmm. The TEI has quite a vocabulary for the little snippets
>>> that can appear at the top of a division, before things start, and the
>>> similar snippets that appear at the end when it's all over... and those
>>> are the elements which make up the divLiminal class [1]. Trying to apply
>>> that vocabulary consistently and clearly to the complexity and richness
>>> of real texts is what the divliminal challenge is all about.
>>>
>>>
>>> We thought it might be useful and possibly even fun to crowdsource the
>>> problem of improving on the TEI's currently rather inconsistent rules.
>>> So we have gathered from the almost limitless depths of the EEBO TCP
>>> corpus a fine collection of tops and bottoms, and we are now launching
>>> the Divliminal Challenge, for members of the TEI community (that's you)
>>> to propose how they should be tagged. We'll respect your anonymity, and
>>> you can do as many taggings as you like; even the same one more than
>>> once (as long as you do it differently). You can use any valid
>>> combination of TEI tags (valid against TEI ALL, that is), or if you
>>> think that's impossible, you can propose a different tagging, using tags
>>> from your own namespace.
>>>
>>>
>>>        How does it work?
>>>
>>>     1.
>>>
>>>        Take a look at the site http://www.tei-c.org/divliminal you'll see a
>>>        list of Tops and Bottoms, identified by number, with a small
>>>        graphic, and a number telling you how many encodings exist for this
>>>        top or bottom so far.
>>>
>>>     2.
>>>
>>>        If you're not discouraged, select one or more of them and consider
>>>        how you think it should be tagged.
>>>
>>>     3.
>>>
>>>        You can download a minimally tagged version of each Top or Bottom.
>>>        Download the ones that interest you, and work them up to perfection
>>>        using Oxygen or your favourite TEI editor.
>>>
>>>     4.
>>>
>>>        Send us your file, making sure not to lose the identifying
>>>        information, and of course adding your name (or pseudonym) to the
>>>        respStmt in the header.
>>>
>>>
>>>        What's in it for me?
>>>
>>> Well nothing much, to be honest, unless of course you are the sort of
>>> person who enjoys marking up texts in TEI. And of course, we will be
>>> maintaining (and prominently displaying) a list of Top Taggers so if
>>> you're looking for kudos, you'll get that too.
>> I think we need to mention again the very real benefit to people that
>> the Council will clarify the Guidelines so that the Guidelines will be
>> less contradictory and clearer for readers, leading to more consistently
>> encoded texts.
>>
>> --K.
>