I've been a long advocate of wrapping things!  Sometime ago, for
example, I proposed something along the lines of
<corr><del></del><add></add></corr>, which met with some approval. The
only problem with it, however, is that wrapping depends on elements
being contiguous. An example is the <cit> tag, which can be used to wrap
a quotation and its source, but not if any CDATA separates the two. So

<cit><q>Well hello Wisconsin</q><bibl>That Seventies Show</bibl></cit>

is legal, but

<cit><q>well,</q> he said, <q>Hello Wisconsin</q><bibl>That Seventies
Show</bibl></cit>

is not, even though there isn't really any serious difference between
the two in terms of content or intention.

Desmond Schmidt's recent question about inversions and other
discontinuous corrections points out another problem with the
containment model.

-dan


James Cummings wrote:

>On Mon, 2 Feb 2004, Daniel O'Donnell wrote:
>
>
>
>>Hi Roberto,
>>
>>I'm hoping this is the recommended way, personally. It is certainly how
>>I do it. All these pairs that seem to rely on position cause problems,
>>of course. You can always use the corresp and ID attributes to make the
>>relationship between expansion and contraction explicit if there is an
>>opportunity for confusion (as there might be for example if you had a
>>string of distinct contractions and abbreviations in a long word).
>>
>>
>
>Hi Daniel/Roberto,
>
>Wouldn't it be better to wrap the <abbr> and <expan> in a <seg> or
><ab> or something?  So instead of:
>
>
>
>>>mann<abbr>«</abbr><expan>um</expan>
>>>
>>>
>
>something like:
>
>Mann<ab type="abbrev"><abbr>Å</abbr><expan>um</expan></ab>
>
>or indeed if encoding at such a level:
>
><w>Mann<ab type="abbrev"><abbr>Å</abbr><expan>um</expan></ab></w>
>
>I guess what I'm concerned about is the opportunity for confusion
>that you note with a string of disctinct contractions/abbreviations
>in a long word.  Using <ab> (if that is indeed the correct thing
>to use?) you at least know that everytime you come across
>an ab[@type='abbrev'] that you have a children, and a potential
>choice.  Whereas with mann<abbr>«</abbr><expan>um</expan> you
>might get this confusion you suggest if the immediately following
><expan> belongs to a different abbreviation.  I wouldn't really
>be worried about it as long as the encoder is consistent, of course.
>
>This is, of course, the perfect situation for Lou's <choice> (or
>whatever) element hopefully appearing in P5.
>
>-James
>
>---
>Dr James Cummings, Oxford Text Archive, University of Oxford
>James.Cummings at ota.ahds.ac.uk +44(0)1865-283296
>
>

--
Daniel Paul O'Donnell, PhD
Associate Professor of English
University of Lethbridge
Lethbridge AB T1K 3M4
Tel. (403) 329-2377
Fax. (403) 382-7191
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Home Page <http://people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odonnell/>