From mb@mbeddow.net Wed Sep 19 10:55:22 2001
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 17:59:31 +0100
From: Michael Beddow <mb@mbeddow.net>
To: editors@tei-c.org
Subject: Re: TEI P4 Review Section 12 - Print dictionaries

Herewith my report on 12 (report on 14 to follow some time tomorrow)

I'd endorse all Stewart's points, though I don't share his view about
not relishing the thought of encoding a real dictionary using these
guidelines. Being currently in the middle of encoding a very real and
rather complex dictionary, I don't know what I'd do without them.

I pass over in silence the various PDF-specific formatting problems
that you're already aware of.

I've also not attempted to address the content model issue whereby the
unavailability of the SGML exclusion mechanism makes <entryFree> liable
to infect <entry> (and indeed the core tagset) with its rampant
permissiveness, since I realise those who need to know about this
problem need no  prompting or advice from me.

I checked all the various instances of non-XML usage in the examples
that I'd marked in my older copy of P4beta while working on the AND, and
they've all been automagically corrected. Nice one, Sebastian.

The only oddity I caught is in an example in
12.3.5.2:

<form>
   <orth extent="full">colour</orth>
</form>
<form>
   <usg type="geo">U.S.</usg>
   <usg>   </usg>
   <orth extent="full">color</orth>
</form>

where a rogue nonsense line (<usg>   </usg>) appears to have crept in.

P3 reads at the same spot:

<form>
   <orth>colour</orth>
</form>
<form>
   <usg type=geo>U.S.<usg>
   <orth>color</orth>
</form>

Apart from that, presumably there was some reason in P4 to add the
extent attribute to the orth, though it doesn't appear germane to the
point being exemplified and so might be unnecessarily distracting.


One other, more generally applicable point. I realise this is not a
substantive editorial update meriting recasting of the references en
bloc, but I do think it's rather odd in fn 30 et passim to refer to the
TEI edition of Computers and the Humanities as still "to appear" rather
than substituting the appropriate dates and references; and in that
specific note, would it not be worth at least extending it to cite
Tutin, A., & Vronis, J. (1998). Electronic Dictionary Encoding:
Customizing the TEI Guidelines, Eighth Euralex International Congress
since that paper contains some important reflections on the content of
12 by one of the section's principal authors?

Good luck with the rest of the Good Work. More from me anon.

Michael
. ---------------------------------------------------------
Michael Beddow   http://www.mbeddow.net/
XML and the Humanities page:  http://xml.lexilog.org.uk/
The Anglo-Norman Dictionary: http://anglo-norman.net/
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