[tei-council] list types and rends: bug 460

Sun Dec 22 22:59:33 EST 2013

I agree completely with Kevin on this. Not only is it hard to correct 
errors etc., it's also impossible to record styling information for the 
text in attributes -- what if your page number happens to be in italics, 
for instance?

I've always assumed that the tolerance for transcribed text in @n was a 
kindness for those moving over from P4, and that it would eventually be 
phased out. Despite the recent discussion with Peter Robinson et al 
about the convenience of the old <orig reg="thing">wosname</orig>, I 
really don't like it.

Cheers,
Martin

On 13-12-22 05:05 PM, Kevin Hawkins wrote:
> While it's convenient to put transcribed text in certain attribute
> values, like @n and @orig, you can run into problems when doing so if
> the text you want to transcribe isn't a valid attribute value or
> contains gaiji, or if you want to point out an error.
>
> So if there was an error in the page numbering, I might capture this by
> doing:
>
> <fw type="pageNum" place="top-right">
>     <choice>
>       <sic>29</sic>
>       <corr>30</corr>
>     </choice>
> </fw>
>
> For an error in a chapter number, I would have:
>
> <div>
>     <head>Chapter
>       <choice>
>         <sic>III</sic>
>         <corr>IV</corr>
>       </choice>
>     </head>
> </div>
>
> Similarly, for an error in a list numbering, I would have:
>
> <list>
>
>     <label>1</label>
>     <item>first item</item>
>
>     <label>2</label>
>     <item>second item</item>
>
>     <label>
>       <choice>
>         <sic>2</sic>
>         <corr>3</corr>
>       </choice>
>     </label>
>     <item>third item</item>
>
> </list>
>
> On 12/22/13 4:34 PM, Lou Burnard wrote:
>> But would you use <label> to capture a page number or chapter number?
>> (see my comment earlier in this thread)?
>>
>>
>>
>> On 22/12/13 19:13, Kevin Hawkins wrote:
>>> Yes, it might be worth exploring this distinction in the Guidelines,
>>> giving contrasting examples of it done both ways and noting that the
>>> <label> approach is required if you want to capture errors in the original.
>>>
>>> I've also been thinking about how the question of whether a list can
>>> reallyl be ordered depends in part on whether you are transcribing a
>>> source document (as we generally assume in TEI) or you are composing
>>> something brand new in TEI (as we've tried to support since P5 was
>>> released).  In other words, when you identify a list in a source
>>> document, it has inherent ordering, but when you create your own list,
>>> you may want to assert that the list you are creating has no order (even
>>> though the act of writing requires that you impose an order when putting
>>> it in a document).
>>>
>>> --Kevin
>>>
>>> On 12/22/2013 2:03 PM, Martin Holmes wrote:
>>>> Thinking more about this, there is some apparent inconsistency in my
>>>> position:
>>>>
>>>> On the one hand, I'm arguing that "1", "2", "3" etc. shouldn't appear in
>>>> @n if they appear in the original text, because transcribed text
>>>> shouldn't be put into attributes;
>>>>
>>>> On the other hand, I'm arguing that<list rend="numbered">  should be
>>>> used to represent a list which appears with numbers in front of the items.
>>>>
>>>> But there is some method in this. If the transcriber's view is that the
>>>> numerical or bullet-like symbols decorating the items are in textual --
>>>> in other words, part of the transcription -- then they can use<label>
>>>> to capture them. If they believe that the decorations are non-textual
>>>> (in the same way that indents, margins, italics and other such features
>>>> are non-textual -- maybe supra-textual?), and that they are
>>>> typographically consistent, then they can be represented using @rend.
>>>> This is a useful distinction. It's interesting that if you create a list
>>>> in HTML and set it to list-style-type: decimal, then copy-paste the list
>>>> from your browser, the numbers will not be included in the paste.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Martin
>>>>
>>>> On 13-12-22 10:45 AM, Martin Holmes wrote:
>>>>> On 13-12-22 10:12 AM, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
>>>>>> On 22 Dec 2013, at 17:54, Martin Holmes<mholmes at uvic.ca>  wrote:
>>>>>>> I see nothing in the definition of @n which suggests it's intended for transcribing things that actually appear in the text:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> <http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/ref-att.global.html#tei_att.n>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Are there other instances in which we ask people to put transcribed text into attributes? I thought the war on attributes was supposed to eliminate this sort of thing entirely. It seems especially bad when<label>  is sitting there for precisely this purpose.
>>>>>> if you want a glorious example of our madness, look at att.global.xml:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>                     <bibl n="   1">
>>>>>>                     <bibl n="   2">
>>>>>>                     <bibl n="   3”>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> what on earth are those spaces/tabs doing in @n, I wonder??
>>>>> That is very hideous. I couldn't bear it so I've removed them. But even
>>>>> more amusing is the following French example, in which although the
>>>>> nasty @n attributes remain, the @xml:base attribute which is supposed to
>>>>> be the point of the example has been deleted. Urg. Should I make up a
>>>>> phony @xml:base for that one?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> but consider these:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>                 <divGen n="Index Nominum" type="NAMES"/>
>>>>>>                 <divGen n="Index Rerum" type="THINGS”/>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> what is “Index Rerum” if not literal text? mind you, that suggests to me that<divGen>  should support<head>.
>>>>>
>>>>> I've always assumed that divGen is most likely to be used to create a
>>>>> modern, external list of contents, rather than to hopefully reconstruct
>>>>> programmatically something that appears in the original text; my
>>>>> experience with original TOCs is that they're inevitably inconsistent or
>>>>> idiosyncratic, and it would be impractical to try to reconstruct them
>>>>> mechanically.
>>>>>
>>>>>> @n "gives a number (or other label) for an element”, which surely is something that should have been killed the The Attribute Wat.
>>>>> I have no objection to its being used to provide a label, but not when
>>>>> that label is in the original text.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Martin
>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Sebastian Rahtz
>>>>>> Director (Research) of Academic IT
>>>>>> University of Oxford IT Services
>>>>>> 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431
>>>>>>
>>