Re: div and p
Paul Schaffner <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.text.tei.general |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <1484231323.1179788.845527376.58C18949@webmail.messagingengine.com> |
Just to confirm that in encoding tens of thousands of books, and
instructing editors, the p,div vs. div,p issue in TEI has been a source
of frequent frustration. Far from being rare, actual examples of
div,p are quite common in the wild. The possible strategies (some
of which in some cases amounted to kludges) were, as I instructed
the editors, basically four:
1. wrap the concluding bits in a semi-artificial div, without heading,
e.g. div type="conclusion" or type="envoi" etc.
<div type="chapter">
<p>
<p>
<div type="section"><head>...</>
<div type="section"><head>...</>
<div type="conclusion"><p/><p/>...</>
</div>
2. wrap the bulk of the containing div -- the divved chunk in the
middle -- in a floatingText element and leave the paragraphs before
and after it as loose p elements
<div type="chapter>
<p>
<p>
<floatingText type="body_of_chapter">
<body>
<div type="section"><head>...</>
<div type="section"><head>...</>
</body>
</floatingText>
<p>
<p>
</div>
(In some cases you can substitute one of the other
almost-floating-text elements such as list, table,
q, quote, or figure)
3. squeeze the concluding bits of the div into one of the
more generous div-liminal tags, e.g. argument, closer,
or (our local custom element) tailnote.
<div type="chapter">
<p>
<p>
<div type="section"><head>...</>
<div type="section"><head>...</>
<argument>
<p>
<p>
</argument>
</div>
4. Put the concluding paragraphs into a sibling div and
type it appropriately
<div type="chapter">
<p>
<p>
<div type="section"><head>...</>
<div type="section"><head>...</>
</div>
<div type="chapter_appendix">
<p>
<p>
</div>
pfs
On Wed, Jan 11, 2017, at 19:32, Marjorie Burghart wrote:
> Thanks, it is indeed a very clear answer to my question.
>
> I am a little confused, though, by the idea that, within section 4,
> section 4.1 may be preceded by some loose paragraphs not belonging to it,
> while section 4.3 could not be followed by the same loose paragraph(s).
> In my understanding, it's a fairly common practice: the paragraphs at the
> beginning serve as a sort of introduction or captatio benevolentiae for
> the whole of section 4, and the final paragraphs at the end serve as a
> sort of conclusion to the entire section 4, and what we would call in
> French a "transition" to section 5.
>
> I'm assuming that you are going to object that, if the last paragraph of
> section 4 is a conclusion I should just wrap it in a <div
> xml:id="conclusion_4">. Fair enough, but then, why am I forced to do that
> for the conclusion, while I have the choice to leave the introduction as
> a loose paragraph?
>
> I'll add that I am annoyed by this rule because I'm currently writing
> several chapters using the jTEI schema (requirement from the editor), and
> in this schema a <div> MUST have a <head>. Normally, I would wrap my
> final, conclusive/transitive paragraph in a <div> (just because of the
> rule described above) and I wouldn't think about it anymore, but I REALLY
> do not want my little paragraph to have a title - that would be against
> all conventions of Western typography.
>
> Best regards,
> Marjorie
>
>
>
> ----- Mail original -----
> De: "C. M. Sperberg-McQueen" <[email protected]>
> À: "Marjorie Burghart" <[email protected]>
> Cc: "C. M. Sperberg-McQueen" <[email protected]>,
> [email protected]
> Envoyé: Jeudi 12 Janvier 2017 01:13:06
> Objet: Re: div and p
>
>
> > On Jan 11, 2017, at 5:01 PM, Marjorie Burghart <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > Dear all,
> >
> > I was wondering: is there a sensible reason why a <p> may occur before a series of <div>s, but not after? I can't make sense of this rule.
>
> When P1 was developed, our understanding of conventional textual
> structure
> was (and in my case remains) that one can and frequently does have, in a
> book with chapters, sections, and subsections, some paragraphs of text in
> chapter 4 before the beginning of section 4.1, and likewise one may have
> some paragraphs in 4.1 before subsection 4.1.1. But in conventional
> Western
> typography I do not believe I have ever seen a book in which section 4.3
> (say)
> ended, was not followed by a section 4.4, but WAS followed by some
> paragraphs
> belonging to chapter 4. An explicit or other closing, maybe. But not
> paragraphs
> of normal text.
>
> One reason for this is the straightforward one that in conventional
> Western
> typography the ending of any section is typically signaled only by the
> beginning of the next section of equal or higher rank — so if you did
> want to
> have the structure described above, your book designer might be hard put
> to
> it to figure out how to get the idea across. (This assumes that you were
> able
> to get the idea across to the book designer in the first place.)
>
> Dominic Dunlop of the British National Corpus once presented me with what
> he
> argued was an example of the structure which I claimed then (and still
> claim now)
> never to have seen. But his example was also interpretable as a labeled
> list
> in which each item had a label and a few paragraphs. There was text
> after
> the last labeled item which was neither a further labeled item nor part
> of the last
> labeled item. But the default TEI document grammar didn’t forbid
> paragraphs
> after lists.
>
> If one is using divs for units other than conventional chapter / section
> / subsection
> style parts of a text, the logic just given may be less compelling.
> Which makes
> me curious: what are you thinking of doing with divs that leads you to
> want
> paragraphs after the last subordinate div? (Would ab do the trick?)
>
> I will leave to your judgement whether the reasons that moved us count as
> sensible, but hope either way to have answered your question.
>
>
>
> ********************************************
> C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
> Black Mesa Technologies LLC
> [email protected]
> http://www.blackmesatech.com
> ********************************************
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