Re: correspondence encoding problems: letter headings
Peter Stadler <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.text.tei.general |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Hi Ron,
it would mean a little restructuring but what about
<div type="letter">
<div type="letterHead"/>
<div type="letterBody"/>
</div>
Best
Peter
> Am 22.02.2017 um 15:54 schrieb Ron Van den Branden <[email protected]>:
>
> Hi,
>
> We're (finally) moving to TEI P5 for correspondence encoding, and would like to stick to "vanilla" TEI as much as possible. While the TEI correspDesc module does a great job in defining and explaining elements for encoding metadata for letters, we often find ourselves struggling with ways to transcribe actual text elements.
>
> One is the letter heading. At first glance, something like (ab|div)[@type='letterhead'] would seem a plausible candidate encoding (I've found a concrete example on slide 40 of the presentation at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_1qUxvG29kvekJDZzQzZ1JZT0E/view). Yet, it seems to be more complicated than this. Typically (but not necessarily), letter headings occur at the start of a letter, before the opening salutation, etc. However, <div> nor <ab> are allowed before <opener> (or any other model.divTop elements). Following encoding hence is invalid:
>
> <!-- invalid -->
> <body>
> <div type="letter">
> <ab type="letterhead">...</ab>
> <opener>...</opener>
> <p>...</p>
> </div>
> </body>
>
> Looking for possible (TEI) solutions, these seem to be the options:
> [1] abstraction: encode <ab type="letterhead"> after <opener>
> [+] easy; <ab> is flexible enough to occur in many places (except before and inside <opener>)
> [-] less faithful to the source
> [2] encode <seg type="letterhead"> inside <opener> (since <div> nor <ab> are allowed inside <opener>)
> [-] not sure if this could be considered as part of the opener, really; <seg> is an inline element
> [3] encode letter heading as <opener rend="letterhead">, sibling to the regular <opener>
> [+] quite elegant (and <closer rend="letterhead"> would be a viable analogy for letter headings occurring at the end of a letter)
> [-] tag abuse? what about letter headings occurring at different locations?
> [4] encode letter heading before <opener> as <head type="letterhead">, *if* it can be considered a title to the letter, really
> [+] could be useful without too much "semantic stretch" for the <head> element
> [-] <head> can only occur as the first element, so unusable for encoding letter headings at different locations
> [5] encode letter heading before <opener> as <figure type="letterhead">, *if* it can be considered a graphical element, really
> [+] <figure> is flexible enough to occur in many places (even inside <opener>, if needed), and leaves different encoding options:
> -only signal its presence: empty <figure type="letterhead"/>, possibly with a description in <figDesc>
> -transcribe its textual contents inside <figure>
> -include a digital image with <graphic/>
> [-] tag abuse?
>
> Following example illustrates these options in different <div type="letter"> sections:
>
> <body>
> <!-- option [1]: ab[@type="letterhead"] after opener -->
> <div type="letter">
> <opener>...</opener>
> <ab type="letterhead">...</ab>
> <p>...</p>
> </div>
> <!-- option [2]: seg[@type="letterhead"] inside opener -->
> <div type="letter">
> <opener>
> <seg type="letterhead">...</seg>
> </opener>
> <p>...</p>
> </div>
> <!-- option [3]: opener[@rend="letterhead"] before actual opener -->
> <div type="letter">
> <opener rend="letterhead">...</opener>
> <opener>...</opener>
> <p>...</p>
> </div>
> <!-- option [4]: head[@type="letterhead"] before actual opener -->
> <div type="letter">
> <head type="letterhead">...</head>
> <opener>...</opener>
> <p>...</p>
> </div>
> <!-- option [5]: figure[@type="letterhead"] before actual opener -->
> <div type="letter">
> <figure type="letterhead">
> <figDesc><!-- a description --></figDesc>
> <graphic url=""><!-- a link to a graphical representation --></graphic>
> <!-- transcription of text contents -->
> </figure>
> <opener rend="letterhead"><!-- option [3] --></opener>
> <opener>
> <seg type="letterhead"><!-- option [2] --></seg>
> </opener>
> <ab type="letterhead"><!-- option [1] --></ab>
> <p>...</p>
> </div>
> </body>
>
> Am I overlooking any other options? How is this being dealt with in other projects?
>
> Personally, I'm getting very much in favour of option [5] (<figure type="letterhead">), since it
> -is flexible (encoders can choose how "deep" they want to encode the letter heading)
> -allows for uniform encoding of letter headings (<figure> can occur anywhere)
> -is quite faithful (letter headings do have graphical qualities, after all)
> Or are there reasons not to take this option?
>
> Many thanks for your thoughts,
>
> Ron