Re: correspondence encoding problems: letter headings
Elisa <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.text.tei.general |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Dear Ron (and Paul and Peter), The letters I work on aren't on letterhead, but in my university life I am often having to prepare a formal letter to be sent on the stuff, which usually involves a little awareness of spacing on the page and some sense that the printing on letterhead contributes (semantically) to the authority of the communication. I can understand then why you might want to encode the printed letterhead "inline", and perhaps there is something more meaningful in your project than the official institutional ethos afforded by specially printed paper. But I think I would be drawn to including the letterhead information and description much the way we currently handle postmarks, wax seals, and watermarks in my (19th-c.) Digital Mitford project, and that is by tucking the details in the TEI header in the supportDesc, as information about the supporting material on which the document is printed that tells us about the paper and resources used (literally) to *support* the document. I think much would depend on how incidental or semantically important the letterhead content is in the project you're developing, and I just wanted to trot supportDesc out as an option to consider. I'm refraining from indicating exactly where in the supportDesc the rendering of letterhead contents might go because I've never coded letterhead before and I'd need to spend a lot of time meditating over the Guidelines to work it out, but my tendency would be to find a way to encode the letterhead such that it doesn't seem part of the semantic flow of the letter's contents. Treating it as a figure makes sense, but how literally does the encoding need to mimic the physical page layout? Cheers, Elisa -- Elisa Beshero-Bondar, PhD Director, Center for the Digital Text Associate Professor of English University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg 150 Finoli Drive, Greensburg, PA 15601 USA E-mail: [email protected] | Development site: http://newtfire.org Typeset by hand on my iPad > On Feb 23, 2017, at 6:38 AM, Ron Van den Branden <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Paul and Peter, > > Many thanks for your replies, I'll comment on both here. > > Thanks, Paul, for correcting my limited assumptions about <head>, and pointing me to the corresponding <trailer> element. I agree they make an appealing pair for encoding letterheads occurring at the start and end of a letter. > > Peter, your proposal is elegant and tempting as well. > > Yet, what about letters written on multiple pages, each containing a letterhead (and not necessarily the same)? I think this would make both approaches less straightforward. For the sake of the argument, I'll assume the structure of a 2-page letter, both containing a leading and trailing letterhead. > > -<head> / <trailer>: since they can't be intermingled with <p>'s, each page would have to be transcribed in a separate <div>, instead of being marked with <pb/>: > > <div type="letter"> > <div type="page"> > <head type="letterHead">...</head> > <opener>...</opener> > <p>...</p> > <trailer type="letterHead">...</trailer> > </div> > <div type="page"> > <head type="letterHead">...</head> > <p>...</p> > <closer>...</closer> > <trailer type="letterHead">...</trailer> > </div> > </div> > > This wrapping of pages in <div>s seems to go against the logical content of the document, especially when a paragraph is split over a page boundary (which has been the motivation for <pb/>). > > -<div type="letterHead">: this would require the <div type="letterBody"> to be split for each new page: > > <div type="letter"> > <div type="letterHead">...</div> > <div type="letterBody"> > <opener>...</opener> > <p>...</p> > </div> > <div type="letterHead">...</div> > <pb/> > <div type="letterHead">...</div> > <div type="letterBody"> > <p>...</p> > <closer>...</closer> > </div> > <div type="letterHead">...</div> > </div> > > I can imagine that both could be linked with @next / @prev, but still it seems highly artificial. > > OTOH, and that's what I like about the flexibility of <figure>, this is perfectly valid: > > <div type="letter"> > <figure type="letterHead">...</figure> > <opener>...</opener> > <p>...</p> > <figure type="letterHead">...</figure> > <pb/> > <figure type="letterHead">...</figure> > <p>...</p> > <closer>...</closer> > <figure type="letterHead">...</figure> > </div> > > I had to argue with myself about the <figure>-ness of letterheads, but the fact that they're typically the result of a lay-out process in the design of the letter paper seems to be an argument in favour. > > Best, > > Ron > >> On 22/02/2017 16:52, Peter Stadler wrote: >> Hi Ron, >> >> it would mean a little restructuring but what about >> <div type="letter"> >> <div type="letterHead"/> >> <div type="letterBody"/> >> </div> >> >> Best >> Peter >>