The <lb> element can take an "ana" attribute.

The "ana" attriute takes IDREFs as its value.



> Now the central issue: link encoding and referring to an element by
> ID/IDREF mechanism.
>
> I'm absolutely not clear how this would work in cases like the one I
> mentioned, dittography (... the <lb> the ...), or with omitted hyphens
> (... link<lb>ing ...).

Yes an ID/IDREF mechanism can help with the above examples:

the example of dittography should be <lb ana="not"> <sic corr="">be</sic
easy to encode

so should the <seg id="part1">ex</seg> <lb ana="hyphen"> <seg
id="part2">ample</seg> <join target="part1 part2"> of the missing hyphen


<note resp="encoder" id="not">page break causes dittography</note>
<note resp="encoder"id="hyphen">missing hyphen with page break</note>



a stylesheet can be wrtten to display or hide these (or other) line breaks
and distinguish between the different types


it is a good example because of its show-and-tell quality to use in
explaining the difference between transcription and encoding.


--
Francois Lachance, Scholar-at-large
         http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance
20th : Machine Age :: 21st : Era of Reparation