Minutes London 03-2009

Present: Katrin Dennerlein, Paolo D'Iorio, Fotis Jannidis, Gregor Middell, Elena Pierazzo, Malte Rehbein, Moritz Wissenbach.

Discussion led by Elena Pierazzo, minutes by Gregor Middell.

Technical infrastructure/ Workflow

 * coordination takes place in this wiki
 * project has to be announced on the news bar at http://tei-c.org/
 * wiki will be reorganzied in 2 distinct parts: a public one (with announcements, draft specs …) and an internal one with information, that is less interesting to the general public
 * list of sponsors has to go on the wiki as well
 * Google Docs used for the (internal) specification process
 * draft versions of the specification are checked out as a PDF document and put on the wiki every week, so we can gather feedback

Conference in Paris

 * ITEM provides up to 3 rooms for the conference; definitely 1 on both days, possibly 3 on the second
 * Paolo D'Iorio coordinates the room allocation with ITEM
 * we want to offer lunch at the conference (attendants shall confirm their participation upon registration)
 * SIG will invite speakers and organizers to a dinner as well
 * Paolo D'Iorio organizes hotel, dinner bookings, internet access, beamer
 * Malte Rehbein manages registration
 * registration deadline is 17.04. (first come, first serve)
 * conference program will be split up into 2 sections:
 * a common program with presentations and public discussions
 * a workgroup-oriented program with talks, which are oriented toward certain aspects of the specification

Spending institution

 * TU Darmstadt/ Universität Würzburg (chair of Fotis Jannidis) will be spending institution
 * in case of any restrictions NUI Galway can serve as a workaround
 * funding will be provided by ALLC, ACH, TEI and Galway
 * Fotis Jannidis contacts sponsors as soon as the ultimate recipient of reimbursements is determined

Program: 1. day

 * start at 02:00pm
 * one coffee break
 * 2 sessions, 4 talks each, 15 min/talk + 5 min/discussion
 * (edition) project presentations

Program: 2. day

 * start at 09:00am
 * present the SIG work: 45 min
 * 10:00am: discussion
 * 11:00am: coffee
 * 11:30am: discussion
 * 01:00pm: lunch
 * 02:00pm:discussion, wrap up, roadmap, outlook
 * finish at 03:30pm

Technical support

 * we want to offer an optional web publication service, so attendants can refer online to all the examples during discussion

Deliverables

 * 1) a presentation of the draft specification  at the conference
 * 2) the XML schema
 * 3) a contribution to the TEI guidelines

Theoretical framework

 * the specification shall be independent of presuppositions made by a particular theoretical framework
 * therefore a couple of typical dichotomies in editorial theory have to be recognized
 * first there is the notion of fact (or representation) vs. interpretation
 * maybe we should think of differing levels of interpretation instead
 * reason: we might not be able to cleary differentiate between „what's there“ (document/fact) and „how does it relate“ (text/interpretation)
 * this leads to the second opposition, that is central to editorial theory: document vs. text
 * Paolo D'Iorio explains the HyperNietzsche approach to handle this opposition
 * HyperNietzsche bases its functionality on a thorough manuscript description, that happens on the documentary level
 * the interpretative acts (constituting a text) build upon the manuscript description
 * to summarize the HyperNietzsche experience while trying to adopt TEI guidelines: the Text Encoding Initiative does not handle "the document level" very well thus far
 * for genetic editions though, this level is crucial

Methodology

 * we want to propose a standard, we do not want (even better: we cannot) prescribe one, given the complex landscape of editorial practices
 * in the beginning we will work on a pseudo-encoding, which is tightly bound to our own terminology
 * in a second step, we will try to map this pseudo-encoding to the actual TEI encoding framework, probably in cooperation with someone from the TEI Council
 * the same step-by-step approach shall be taken for the standardization process
 * first we develop an application profile aka. TEI customization
 * when that proves to be of general interest, we rework it into a separate chapter for the TEI guidelines

Topological description on the document level

 * the description functions hierarchically on 3 levels:
 * highest level: the page
 * pages contain zones
 * zones are are nestable, groupable, can overlap and have a depth level (aka. belong to a layer)
 * zones are arbitrary in as much as they can be defined by layout and/or semantic aspects
 * on a third level, zones normally contain (among other entities) lines

Dating

 * on the one handthe dating of a witness may not be directly related to its encoded content, it therefore has to go into the header
 * on the other hand, dates added by the original author as metadata to the text on the witness should be encoded without necessarily going into the header
 * dating can be justified by prose and/or by reference to a characteristic of a manuscript (e.g. hand)

   ...    

Time/ Chronology

 * we want to express time as absolute and relative measures
 * express absolute time by adapting the existing date element/attributes; see http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/ND.html#NDATTSda
 * express relative time as predecessor/successor-relationships
 * might be a direct relationship: next, previous
 * might be a „sorting“ relationship: before, after
 * relationships may also be expressed via a numbering scheme
 * relationships may have 1:n cardinality, e.g. one witness is dated before a set of others

Grouping changes (“changesets”)

 * forming changesets is necessary to group text passages, which all form one revision
 * implemented either via a wrapping element (e.g. ) or via a stand-off mechanism for spatially disparate changes

Alterations

 * alterations are practically related to the collation of texts
 * we need to deal with collation as a separate aspect of genetic editions
 * for example we need an expression for ommissions as a textual feature, that results from relating texts via collation
 * another set of alterations to be expressed is the one, that results from authors fixating a text passage by overwriting it (e.g. a penciled passage fixated with ink)
 * marginal notes have to be differentiated from functional marks commanding an alteration (e.g. „move this passage over there”)

“marked as used”

 * passages happen to be striked through, which marks the passage to be used at another location
 * two-step markup
 * first: markup the block on the document level
 * secondly: describe the function (“mark as used”)

Overwriting

 * overwriting is a special case of a deletion

Undoing alterations

 * how to express on the document level, that an alteration has been taken back, e.g. a striked through passage being reinstantiated via a dotted underlining
 * already exists for undoing an deletion, but we might need a more general approach
 * possible solutions via an element or via an attribute “undo”
 * proposal: add a generic element with an attribute referring to the action being undone
 * can be further differentiated by a type attribute, e.g. immediate correction vs. revising
 * this is preliminary: we have to open up this solution to discussion

Transpositions

 * current approach: express transpositions as pairs of additions and deletions
 * we also want to express transpositions as an atomic operation, because it might be expressed as such on the document as well
 * first: make the segment to be transposed adressable
 * either via an identifiable wrapping element or via a “cross-cutting”
 * secondly: markup “functional mark”, which might be in the text (e.g. a superlinear “add ‘is’ here”), with an element like 
 * relate the functional mark to the identified passages

add ‘is’ here


 * either refer to the passage added via attributes
 * or it might be implicit, which passage is transposed, because the  is contained in an or
 * maybe we can generalize the idea of a functional mark ()
 * we markup passages on the representational level, but also on the semantic level, on which they command alterations

Clarification

 * think of clarification as a repetition of a text
 * this idea can also offer a solution for encoding fixations



Correction

 * supply an additional attribute to and that typifies the alteration (e. g. “instant correction”)

“Coordinate system”

 * how to express genetic relationships on an inter- and intra-document level
 * we need a scheme for addressing the linked passages and a means for describing such relationships/ links
 * adopt the HyperNietzsche concept: relational description via paths
 * paths are typed, depending on the relation expressed (e.g. a timeline, a conceptual link …)
 * paths: define complete paths via a set of vertices (steps)
 *  is a candidate for grouping a set of steps forming a path
 * steps of a path can be ordered or unordered, but that might belon to the aspect of uncertainty)
 * the steps of a path should be describable, so the expressed relationships can be justified or further characterized
 * we should import concepts from the critical apparatus here: http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/TC.html
 * relationships might be transitive in nature, should we express that as well
 * then: is there a potential scope conflict between the TEI and other graph-oriented markup languages like RDF/XML
 * maybe we can differentiate between the description of the relationships itself and their characterization/justification
 * the relationships might be described as an RDF graph, which is augmented with TEI-based prose

Organizational tasks

 * conference announcement: Malte Rehbein
 * call for more examples on the TEI list: Elena Pierazzo
 * apply for a panel on the next TEI Member’s meeting

Specification tasks

 * as we were not able to deal with all aspects, the further work on the remaining ones is distributed among the SIG members