Martin Holmes wrote:
I think Peter's point is a very good one, though; in XML, one must prioritize one hierarchy over another where they overlap; if the conceptual structure is prioritized, the physical must be relegated to milestones.
I think there is a long-term solution to this. I think multiple markups can exist on the same text, as long as they're in "different dimensions"; it's hard to explain, but imagine the text as a string going through space, and the markups as planes radiating out from it.
[... snip ...]
That's right. You can have multiple annotations on the same XML structure. This technique, now generally known as "stand-off" annotation, is currently quite popular in the field of linguistics, to handle things like prosodic vs syntactic hierarchies. You segment your text once, and then you create as many different views of it as you like. Each view constitutes a single hierarchy, and is composed of pointing elements which identify how the fragments of your segmented texts are to be combined in that particular hierarchy. Something like it is described in the chapter of the TEI Guidelines which addresses the issue of non-hierarchic structures.
Your Shakespeare is pretty neat, by the way! How does one get to see the XML source though?
Lou