Re: use cases for <space>

I'm off to a meeting, so I won't trouble to defend <gap/>, but
would for the moment point out that there are at least four
situations, some of which should perhaps be distinguished:

1. A book leaves a blank because the information is not
(yet?) available. E.g. in lists of office holders or attendees at
a meeting, if the name is forgotten or similar you'll see

   John Smith
   Bill Bones
   James ________
   Richard Roe

(gaps left for decorative initials to be supplied later might
fall into this category too.)

2. A form or form book leaves blanks intended to be put in
by hand when used

   This __ day of ___ 16__, the ship ______ was examined
   and found to draw ____ feet of water.

3. Polite elision, occasional before 1700, endemic in the 18th
century. A blank intended to be filled in *mentally* but not
usually physically.

   Mr. B***** of the town of M****** wrote to me...

4. An example of one of these (especially no.2) which has
in fact been filled in.

Also that the 'blank' itself might be literally blank, or might be
represented by some character or character string, such as
----- _____ ***** or .....  -- which might be worth preserving.
I used to think this info not worth preserving, until I received
queries from three different people trying to find patterns in
the characters used to represent polite elision.

More later (maybe).

pfs


On Mon, Feb 13, 2017, at 10:10, Martin Mueller wrote:
> The sources of TCP texts include forms that deliberately leave a space to
> be filled in by somebody,  as in A83003 (Wing E1791), where the phrase
> “Aſſeſſors and Collectors of” is followed by a space to let somebody
> write down what they were assessing or collecting.  In this particular
> TCP transcription the space is represented by a <gap> element. That
> doesn’t seem right.  There is no lacuna there; it is, in Wallace Stevens’
> lovely phrase a “nothing that is.”
> 
> Would <space> be the appropriate element for representing this?  It’s
> from the transcription module, which deals with the physical aspects of
> documentary edition, which is not what the TCP texts are about. And the
> description of the <space> element in the Guidelines does not include
> this, although I’d think of this as a very obvious use case that it might
> good to have mentioned there, if <space> is thought of as the right
> solution for this sort of thing.
> 
> And what about a name like “B     “, not uncommon in satirical texts?
-- 
Paul Schaffner  Digital Library Production Service
[email protected] | http://www.umich.edu/~pfs/