Dear Philipp, thanks for the feedback! My question was more out of general interest BTW, without a particular project in mind (although I might certainly be interested in such solutions myself). When you need to use LaTex fot the typesetting of a "complicated" edition, wouldn't you recommend encoding it in TEI in the first place, then XSLT it in LaTex? Actually, I had until recently vaguely thought that XSL FO could handle multiple layers of footnotes, making it possible to create a camera-ready PDF directly from the XML TEI file, but according to a discussion on another list (http://listserv.inist.fr/sympa/arc/tei-fr/2010-06/msg00002.html) it doesn't seem possible. Best, Marjorie
Philipp Reichmuth wrote:
Dear Marjorie,
you mention three major constraints: time, money, and the unavailability of someone to do the typesetting for you. However, it is a bit unclear whether you are looking for a solution for a particular editing project of your own or for something to recommend to somebody else, for example to students. Also, what do you want this software to do, other than multiple footnote levels? What kind of text are you editing? How large is it? Are there multiple alphabets involved? Does the edition make heavy use of cross-references? Is there a need for managing a bibliography?
Personally I would still recommend LaTeX for critical editions, but with a good frontend to make it accessible. On that front I would recommend LyX, which is effectively a graphical document processor that uses LaTeX for producing printed output, so that one hardly ever has to get into the \more{intimidating} aspects of LaTeX. There is a bit of a learning curve, but LyX does a very good job of keeping it manageable. It may be somewhat geeky, but then again philology in general and critical editions in particular are already slightly nerdy endeavours in themselves, and as long as the final PDF looks fine the geekiness of the process does not really matter much, or so it would seem to me.
Regarding multiple footnote levels, there are LaTeX packages to do that (for example "bigfoot" by David Kastrup) and examples how to make them accessible as LyX modules (e.g. http://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-users@lists.lyx.org/msg77335.html). There is also a rather friendly user community and mailing list.
Personally I've used it for a recently-finished 320-page manuscript with edited text in three alphabets, including right-to-left text and heavy use of diacritics, some fifty graphical figures, an automatically-generated 550-entry bibliography and and some 1500 cross-references. Only one footnote level, though, but multiple levels would have been no problem.
Philipp
On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 3:06 PM, Marjorie Burghart marjorie.burghart@ehess.fr wrote:
Dear Godfried, Of course, you have a point there: typesetting is a job on its own. Although, there are occasions on which you might want to handle the multiple layers of footnotes: either when you have to prepare the camera-ready file without the help of a professional typesetter (I know many students, for instance, who have to use LaTex for the critical edition included in their thesis, just to obtain the mandatory multiple layers), or also when you simply want to have a "cleaner" apparatus for your own use on a "work-in-progress" critical edition.
Marjorie
Croenen, Godfried wrote:
Dear Marjorie,
I fully recognise the problem but unless you want do the typesetting yourself, then there is no real need to use any of these packages. My personal experience teaches me that professional typesetters can perfectly set as many layers of footnotes as you need and many of them will take XML or SGML files as input.
Godfried
-----Original Message----- From: dm-l-bounces@uleth.ca [mailto:dm-l-bounces@uleth.ca] On Behalf Of Marjorie Burghart Sent: 15 June 2010 09:54 To: dm-l@uleth.ca Subject: [dm-l] Multiple streams / stages of footnotes: what solutions?
Dear list, As those of you who have had the pleasure to tackle critical editions in printed form know, the traditional mutiple streams or "stages" of footnotes (variants + biblical references + sources, for instance) are a real pain, and very few solutions are offered.
I knew of two, mainly (leaving aside InDesign and the like): LaTex (for the bold and slightly geeky critical editor with time on his hands), and the Classical Text Editor, an apparently quite interesting text editor dedicated to critical editions (unfortunately rather expensive).
I have just discovered that, apparently, a word processor for MacOSX is capable of handling those multiple layers: http://www.redlers.com/mellelscholars.htm See also for a more detailed explanation of the footnotes features p. 111- 124 in the PDF manual: http://www.connectnw.com/redlers/MellelGuide.pdf Unfortunately, I have no MacOsX at hand for the moment, and haven't been able to give this word processor a test yet. But I would be very interested to hear from the DM-L list members, if ever some of you had tried this Mellel software.
More generally, do some of you use other solutions to handle multiple streams of footnotes in their *printed* editions, and what is your assesment of the various solutions?
Best, Marjorie
This is the way I'd do it, Marjorie.
On 10-06-15 06:54 AM, Marjorie Burghart wrote:
Dear Philipp, thanks for the feedback! My question was more out of general interest BTW, without a particular project in mind (although I might certainly be interested in such solutions myself). When you need to use LaTex fot the typesetting of a "complicated" edition, wouldn't you recommend encoding it in TEI in the first place, then XSLT it in LaTex? Actually, I had until recently vaguely thought that XSL FO could handle multiple layers of footnotes, making it possible to create a camera-ready PDF directly from the XML TEI file, but according to a discussion on another list (http://listserv.inist.fr/sympa/arc/tei-fr/2010-06/msg00002.html) it doesn't seem possible. Best, Marjorie
Philipp Reichmuth wrote:
Dear Marjorie,
you mention three major constraints: time, money, and the unavailability of someone to do the typesetting for you. However, it is a bit unclear whether you are looking for a solution for a particular editing project of your own or for something to recommend to somebody else, for example to students. Also, what do you want this software to do, other than multiple footnote levels? What kind of text are you editing? How large is it? Are there multiple alphabets involved? Does the edition make heavy use of cross-references? Is there a need for managing a bibliography?
Personally I would still recommend LaTeX for critical editions, but with a good frontend to make it accessible. On that front I would recommend LyX, which is effectively a graphical document processor that uses LaTeX for producing printed output, so that one hardly ever has to get into the \more{intimidating} aspects of LaTeX. There is a bit of a learning curve, but LyX does a very good job of keeping it manageable. It may be somewhat geeky, but then again philology in general and critical editions in particular are already slightly nerdy endeavours in themselves, and as long as the final PDF looks fine the geekiness of the process does not really matter much, or so it would seem to me.
Regarding multiple footnote levels, there are LaTeX packages to do that (for example "bigfoot" by David Kastrup) and examples how to make them accessible as LyX modules (e.g. http://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-users@lists.lyx.org/msg77335.html). There is also a rather friendly user community and mailing list.
Personally I've used it for a recently-finished 320-page manuscript with edited text in three alphabets, including right-to-left text and heavy use of diacritics, some fifty graphical figures, an automatically-generated 550-entry bibliography and and some 1500 cross-references. Only one footnote level, though, but multiple levels would have been no problem.
Philipp
On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 3:06 PM, Marjorie Burghart marjorie.burghart@ehess.fr wrote:
Dear Godfried, Of course, you have a point there: typesetting is a job on its own. Although, there are occasions on which you might want to handle the multiple layers of footnotes: either when you have to prepare the camera-ready file without the help of a professional typesetter (I know many students, for instance, who have to use LaTex for the critical edition included in their thesis, just to obtain the mandatory multiple layers), or also when you simply want to have a "cleaner" apparatus for your own use on a "work-in-progress" critical edition.
Marjorie
Croenen, Godfried wrote:
Dear Marjorie,
I fully recognise the problem but unless you want do the typesetting yourself, then there is no real need to use any of these packages. My personal experience teaches me that professional typesetters can perfectly set as many layers of footnotes as you need and many of them will take XML or SGML files as input.
Godfried
-----Original Message----- From: dm-l-bounces@uleth.ca [mailto:dm-l-bounces@uleth.ca] On Behalf Of Marjorie Burghart Sent: 15 June 2010 09:54 To: dm-l@uleth.ca Subject: [dm-l] Multiple streams / stages of footnotes: what solutions?
Dear list, As those of you who have had the pleasure to tackle critical editions in printed form know, the traditional mutiple streams or "stages" of footnotes (variants + biblical references + sources, for instance) are a real pain, and very few solutions are offered.
I knew of two, mainly (leaving aside InDesign and the like): LaTex (for the bold and slightly geeky critical editor with time on his hands), and the Classical Text Editor, an apparently quite interesting text editor dedicated to critical editions (unfortunately rather expensive).
I have just discovered that, apparently, a word processor for MacOSX is capable of handling those multiple layers: http://www.redlers.com/mellelscholars.htm See also for a more detailed explanation of the footnotes features p. 111- 124 in the PDF manual: http://www.connectnw.com/redlers/MellelGuide.pdf Unfortunately, I have no MacOsX at hand for the moment, and haven't been able to give this word processor a test yet. But I would be very interested to hear from the DM-L list members, if ever some of you had tried this Mellel software.
More generally, do some of you use other solutions to handle multiple streams of footnotes in their *printed* editions, and what is your assesment of the various solutions?
Best, Marjorie
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Marjorie Burghart -
O'Donnell, Dan