An epistle is a letter. The passage you quote from the TEI Lite
tutorial is discussing the common practice in early printed books of
including a prefatory epistle from or to some dignatory as a way of
introducing the work that follows. You know the sort of thing:
TO THE HONOURABLE LORD FLANNEL
MY LORD,
What splendid trousers you have! And how nice of you to pay for the
printing of this book about your world famous collection of trousers!
YOUR HUMBLE SERVANT
A. Hack
In TEI P1, there actually was a tag called <epistle> to mark such things
along with a number of other specialised tags like <foreword>
<dedication>. Then we saw the error of our ways, and turned them all
into <div type="epistle"> <div type="dedication"> etc.
I'm not sure exactly what you ean by "those elements", but I assume you
are referring to the list of divtop elements (<salute>, <signed> etc.)
given in U5. The reference to "Epistles" is misleading, since the DTD
allows divtop elements to appear at the start or end of a <div> of any
type. The intention was probably to restrict their appearance to <div
type="epistle">s, but this is not enforceable by the DTD. And a good
thing too, since it's quite possible to find them at the start of say
<div type="foreword">s as well.
The comment "Epistles which appear elsewhere in a text will, of course,
contain these same elements" should probably be corrected to read "divs
of type epistle which appear..."
So the answer to your final question is, imffho, Yes.
Sorry for the delayed response: I've been on holiday.
Lou
about Branko Collin wrote:
> The TEIXLITE Guidelines give several tags to be used in an 'epistle'
> at <http://www.tei-c.org/Lite/U5-fronbac.html#h52>.
>
> What is meant with 'epistle' here? My dictionary presents the
> following options:
>
> "epistle n. 1 joc. letter. 2 (Epistle) any of the apostles' letters
> in the New Testament. 3 poem etc. in the form of a letter. [Greek
> epistole from stello send]"
>
> The section on 'Headings and Closings' (<http://www.tei-c.org/Lite/U5-
> body.html#h25>) points to this front-/back matter section for 'Some
> other elements which may be necessary at the beginning or ending of
> text divisions', but it is unclear to me if this is meant to indicate
> that I can use those elements within <body> <div>s.
>
> So, can I use these elements within any DIV element?
>
> --
> branko collin
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
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