Re: Simple alternation

On 18/10/16 20:15, C. M. Sperberg-McQueen wrote
> Er, why tag it as unclear?  It looks perfectly legible to me
> in the image.

Because (I assume) it's not clear which is the right reading, 
specifically because of lack of clarity as to the initial letter.

> Like Magdalena Turska, I think this looks like app and rdg.
> Both readings are from the same witness, but that’s not
> unknown.

True, but it is rare (I would suggest nonexistent) to have *only* 
readings from a single witness.


> The documentation for ‘choice’ says
>
>      Because the children of a choice element all represent alternative
>      ways of encoding the same sequence, it is natural to think of them
>      as mutually exclusive. However, there may be cases where a full
>      representation of a text requires the alternative encodings to be
>      considered as parallel.
>
> It would be a more obvious choice if the Guidelines specified one
> interpretation as a default and provided an attribute for overriding
> that interpretation.  But I read the paragraph quoted as saying that
> you as an encoder are at liberty to take either interpretation; I’d put
> a remark in the header to inform later readers of the document.

I'd forgotten about that weaselly worded paragraph.  In all the years 
we've been using this element I have yet to see any case where "the 
alternative encodings" are also somehow "to be considered as parallel".  
Maybe because I'm having trouble working out what that might mean. If 
they're alternatives, how can they be parallel? Can you suggest an example?