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GVogeler / CEI2TEI

This repository documents the proposal to insert diplomatics concepts into the framework of the TEI-P5 (http://www.tei-c.org/Guidelines/P5/), based on the experiences of the Charters Encoding Initiative (http://www.cei.lmu.de)
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Replaced attribute "type" in element "note" impedes using "note" outside of the transcription #57

Open AlinaOs opened 1 year ago

AlinaOs commented 1 year ago

The problem In tei_cei.odd, lines 565-595, the attribute type in the element tei:core.note was replaced with a custom type attribute definition implementing restrictions on the values that may be used.

These values are clearly intended for a use of tei:core.note in the context of the transcription of the charter text. A use of note in this case indicates, that a legal document contains some text, that can be classified as a note. However, tei:core.note may occur in other contexts such as the manuscript description (example at the bottom) or the apparatus (last example in section '12.1.2 Readings'). In these contexts notes are usually used to annotate a (meta-)note given by the authors of the TEI-file/editors of the text and not to annotate the text of the legal document itself. The values enumerated for the type-attribute don't fit these usecases, yet because the mode of the attribute definition is 'replace' (<attDef ident="type" mode="replace">), the type attribute cannot be used with any other custom value as would have been possible in the original TEI definition.

This makes it impossible to accurately define the type of an editorial note outside of the context of source text annotation.

How to reproduce E.g., try to add a note with a custom type in a witness list:

...
<listWit>
  <witness xml:id="sigil">Madrid, Archivo Histórico Nacional, Secc. Clero, Pergaminos, carp. 1234567
    <note type="msDetail" place="preface">The manuscript was thought to have been lost in a fire but gladly recovered later.</note>
  </witness>
</listWit>
...

When linked to a .xsd schema file generated from the tei_cei.odd, the document will not validate due to a violation of the enumeration restriction in the type attribute:

Validation_Error_notetype

Suggestions for fixing this issue Suggestion 1: Don't replace the type attribute of tei:core.note. Instead, add a new attribute, e.g. named diploNoteType or some other fitting name, that has the restriction with the currently used values 'production', 'ownership', 'personal', 'impersonal', 'structural', 'other'. This way, the note element can still be used to annotate notes in the source text (combined with the attribute diploType) as well as to annotate editorial remarks or other notes (combined with the standard TEI type and subtype attribute). This fix could be implemented easily without having to change a lot in the current tei_cei.odd.

Suggestion 2: If it is deemed important, that a note annotation occurring in the transcription must always be used with the given values as type, an additional element could be provided for the use case of annotating note-text already present in the source. This element, e.g. called diploNote or some other fitting name, would then be a possible child of the body and could override the TEI's type attribute by its own restricted type attribute, as it is currently the case for TEI:core.note. This way, the diploNote element could be used for annotating the notes found in a legal document, while tei:core.note would be used for all other types of notes.

AlinaOs commented 1 year ago

Edit On closer examination suggestion 2, adding a totally new element for marginalia and notes, might be even more ontologically fitting than adapting the note element as described in suggestion 1. Reasoning: It seems like note may be, but was originally not intended to be, used for the annotation of a note in the source document. All example uses given by the TEI only refer to uses in an editorial sense: The note element contains meta information on, but not the source text itself. Unfortunately, currently there seems to be no element in the TEI fitting the definition of holding a marginalia, as pointed out in this paper: Laura Estill, Encoding the Edge: Manuscript Marginalia and the TEI, in: Digital Literary Studies 1.1 (2016), DOI: https://doi.org/10.18113/P8dls1159715. All elements, that are currently used for this purpose, do often only fit special cases of marginalia or notes.

In reviewing this difficulty of the current TEI guidelines, introducing a new element (as described in suggestion 2 of the original issue post) dedicated to capturing marginalia and notes in diplomatic sources may be the sematically clearest way to adapt the TEI for CEI purposes. Alternatively, the add element, specified by an according @type-value, may be used to differentiate between editorial notes (note) and historical notes added to the document (add). Some examples for the use of add point in this direction, cf. att.placement and Core Tags for Drama examples. Therefore suggestion 3 would be:

Suggestion 3 for fixing this issue: Don't replace the type attribute of tei:core.note. Instead, add a new attribute, e.g. named diploNoteType or some other fitting name, to tei:core.add. This new attribute has the restriction with the currently used values 'production', 'ownership', 'personal', 'impersonal', 'structural', 'other'. Notes in the source text could then be annotated like this: <add type="note" diploNoteType="ownership" place="margin left">Ex archivo Catalano</add> with the @type attribute specifying that the note doesn't belong to the main text but was made somewhere in the margin and is therefore considered to be a note.