Subject: New release of TEI P5 and MSencoding
From: Elena Pierazzo <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2007 10:22:04 +0100

Dear all,

I would like to draw your attention on the recently released P5 that 
contains huge elements of novelty on the MS encoding.

One of those have been already announced by Sebastian and it is the 
introduction of an element <facsimile> that will be able to help to 
connect annotated images to the transcribed text and the wished level of 
granularity.

But there are at least three other big improvements:

1. Abbreviations
=============
As many of you will remember, some six months ago there has been a 
lively discussion about how to expand abbreviations within an 
abbreviated word. The result of such discussion is the new model present 
in the Guidelines 
(http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/html/PH.html#PHCH) that 
includes two new elements <am> (abbreviation marker) and <ex> (editorial 
expansion) to be used, respectively, within <abbr> and <expan> or within 
a <choice> as follow:

<expan>
  <ex>per</ex>sone
</expan>

<choice>
  <am>
   <g ref="#per"/>
  </am>
  <ex>per</ex>
 </choice>sone

2. Encoding of time in modern manuscripts
================================
This is another long wished development. A new element <subst> has been 
created (see 
http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/html/PH.html#PHSU) to group 
corrections; furthermore a new attribute @seq is available for <add> and 
<del> elements in order to record the temporal sequence of the corrections:

One must have lived longer with <subst>
  <del seq="1">this</del>
  <del seq="2">
   <add seq="1">such a</add>
  </del>
  <add seq="2">a</add>
 </subst> system, to appreciate its advantages.

To encode timed sequences there is also a @varSeq attribute that can be 
used with <rdg> element within an <app>.

3. Restorations
============
An element <restore> has been created 
(http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/html/PH.html#PHCD) to 
encode segments firstly marked for deletions and then restored by the 
same or other hand. For ex.:

For I hate this <restore hand="#dhl" type="marginalStetNote">
  <del>my</del>
 </restore>
body

I thought that this summary of the novelties in TEI Representation (n.b. 
not Transcription!) of Primary Source would have been useful for anybody 
interested in manuscripts.
Personally, I am really pleased about all these brand new elements, even 
if I think that one might argue about the @varSeq model the facto paired 
with the <subst> model (building a critical apparatus and transcribing 
corrections in a manuscripts are not the same thing!).

Any other opinion?

Best,

Elena