Abdullah,
I'd second what Notis is suggesting here. Using a format like:
<L 2> ðu eart se weallstan þe ða wyrhtan iu
is really moving backwards in technological development to the 1980s and markup languages like COCOA and OCP. We have lots of stuff in such terrible formats in the Oxford Text Archive, and it is a pain to convert. Using XML, as Notis suggests, would allow you to take advantage of all the existing tools for creating, manipulating, transforming and querying XML. You can always transform from a TEI XML structure like:
<l n="2">ðu eart se weallstan þe ða wyrhtan iu</l>
back to
<L 2> ðu eart se weallstan þe ða wyrhtan iu
really really easily, if that is how some other input program suggests.
Murray: To answer your original question, I remember doing something similar in emacs eons ago. (I've given up on emacs and use oxygen for most text/script/program files and OO for everything else.) I can't remember if it was a built-in function from some package I had installed, or whether I knocked up a bit of elisp to do it. Let me know if you are desperate to do it this way and I can dig back through my old elisp files somewhere.
For the record, the way I would do this now would be one of two ways: 1) For a quick hack where I needed to do it quickly I would add the line numbers automatically to the text file in openoffice and then just cut and paste it back into my text editor. (Inefficient I know...) 2) I have an XSLT script which will read in a plain text file and output everything in <l> (with a new <lg> for any blank lines between stanzas.
However, I would echo what I'd say to Abdullah above. *Why* add line numbers? The *only* reason really to add line numbers these days is if the line numbering is irregular for some reason. (i.e. the text goes 1,2,3,4, *big burnt hole*,12,13,14.) Amazingly, computers are really good at counting, and counting lines is easy. So, mark everything up as <l> and then just number them automatically when producing a presentation version.
Just my tuppence,
-James
Notis Toufexis wrote:
Why not encode your poem in TEI usind the <l> (or any other element) and output line numbers using XSLT and xsl:number? Best, Notis
On 11/15/06, * Abdullah Alger* <Abdullah.Alger-2@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk mailto:Abdullah.Alger-2@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
I've done this in Excel for my own concordance. You can put the lines in the cells, then in another column you can automatically put 1, 2, 3, etc. down the side by highlighting the first two or three and then by dragging the pointer down to where the end of the text is. You can also modify the numbers in a different format, by selecting a custom format for the cells. Below is a sample of what I did. Abdullah Alger <L 1> cyninge <L 2> ðu eart se weallstan þe ða wyrhtan iu <L 3> wiðwurpon to weorce Wel þe geriseð <L 4> þæt þu heafod sie healle mærre <L 5> ond gesomnige side weallas <L 6> fæste gefoge flint unbræcne <L 7> þæt geond eorðbold eall eagna gesihþe Quoting Murray McGillivray <mmcgilli@ucalgary.ca <mailto:mmcgilli@ucalgary.ca>>: > Folks, I have a number of text files of poetry that I'd like to add > line numbers to for concordancing, starting the numbering at 1 and > continuing to the last text line, with the line numbers ending up as > part of the resulting text file, each number on the relevant line > before the text of that line of verse begins. > > I've done this before a few times a while ago, but danged if I can > remember what I used. I know I didn't write anything to do it, though > I assume it's pretty easy to do so. I think it was in a text editor > or word processor, but looking at vi and emacs it looks like I can > only get the line numbers to display with the file, not to be added > to the file, and that's true of some Windows ones as well and of > Word, unless there are tricks. > > The UNIX/Linux "nl" utility does basically what I want (if I pipe the > output to a file, I get my text file back but with a line number and > a tab added to the beginning of each line), and I can deal with the > output but I remember (possibly from one of those technicolor > dreams--you'll let me know!) a more interactive, less command-liney, > way of doing this that would make this stage easier. > > Thanks for any help. > > Murray McGillivray > > _______________________________________________ > Digital Medievalist Project > Homepage: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org > Journal (Spring 2005-): http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal.cfm <http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal.cfm> > RSS (announcements) server: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/rss/rss2.cfm > Wiki: http://sql.uleth.ca/dmorgwiki/index.php <http://sql.uleth.ca/dmorgwiki/index.php> > Change membership options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l > Submit RSS announcement: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/newitem.cfm > Contact editorial Board: digitalmedievalist@uleth.ca <mailto:digitalmedievalist@uleth.ca> > dm-l mailing list > dm-l@uleth.ca <mailto:dm-l@uleth.ca> > http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l > _______________________________________________ Digital Medievalist Project Homepage: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org Journal (Spring 2005-): http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal.cfm <http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal.cfm> RSS (announcements) server: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/rss/rss2.cfm Wiki: http://sql.uleth.ca/dmorgwiki/index.php <http://sql.uleth.ca/dmorgwiki/index.php> Change membership options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l Submit RSS announcement: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/newitem.cfm Contact editorial Board: digitalmedievalist@uleth.ca <mailto:digitalmedievalist@uleth.ca> dm-l mailing list dm-l@uleth.ca <mailto:dm-l@uleth.ca> http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l