The following is a private exchange related to this topic. I was at first
too diffident to send it to the list but have since been prompted to go
ahead. I apologize for the reverse order of the discussion and welcome any
suggestions you might offer.

Rob

Robert Whalen
English
Northern Michigan University

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Whalen [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 10:34 AM
To: 'Julia Flanders'
Subject: RE: floating divs revisited

Thanks, Julia. It's nice to know that someone thinks that my approach is (as
far as you can see with the little I've told you) basically sound.

I have indeed wondered about the choice between <div> and <text>, the reason
being that I do see the individual texts (W, B, 1633) as having distinct
sections. All three have three sections with running titles: The Church
Porch, The Church, The Church Militant. Each of these contains a number of
poems, with the exception of the latter which is itself one poem but also a
distinct section (which raises yet another interpretive problem).

If I use <div> to describe the four sections of the Grand Thing, would it be
inconsistent to also use <div> to describe the structure of the text
instances making up the Grand Thing? 

Rob  

Robert Whalen
English
Northern Michigan University
-----Original Message-----
From: Julia Flanders [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2005 5:06 PM
To: Robert Whalen
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: RE: floating divs revisited

Dear Rob,

It's great to hear from you. I'm glad your project is moving forward! 
I'm ccing Syd on my response in case he has additional thoughts. You 
might also be interested in posting to the TEI list--this is not an 
amateurish inquiry and would probably prompt a flood of in-depth 
geeky responses, particularly on the issues of how you express the 
composite edition. Some of these might even be helpful.  But here are 
my two cents:

I don't think your use of  <div> is wrong--certainly not with respect 
to the representation of the hierarchy. The only question is whether 
<text> would be better, only because each of the things you are 
representing with <div> is really a separate text. If so, you could 
encode your Grand Thing as follows:

<TEI.2>
<teiHeader/>
<text>
    <front/> [for the whole thing]
    <group>
       <text id="edition"/>
       <text id="williamsMS"/>
       <text id="bodleianMS"/>
       <text id="1633"/>
    </group>
    <back/> [for the whole thing]
</text>
</TEI.2>

I'm not sure you gain  much by doing this, but it's worth remembering 
that it's an option, especially if any of your versions (e.g. 1633) 
has front matter. But perhaps in any case you would suppress this to 
focus on the poems which are the real thing at issue.

But I don't see a problem with <div> for any other reason. These 
divisions are in effect subdivisions of your Grand Composite Thing, 
even if they were originally independent units. So if it does what 
you want, I say more power to you.

Your XSLT for doing the compositing will be of immense interest to 
others doing this kind of thing, so I hope you'd consider 
contributing it to the TEI stylesheets wiki when it's done, even if 
it's highly specialized and only works on your stuff.

Good luck! best wishes, Julia

>Dear Julia,
>
>I'm one of your students from the Summer Institute in Victoria. As you
know,
>I'm working on an edition of Herbert's verse for UVa.
>
>My question has to do with the recent discussion on TEI-list about the
<div>
>tag. Rather than go into much detail about that discussion, I'd rather pose
>my question by telling you what I plan on doing and then receive some
>feedback about whether and why it is (or is not) sound. (I hesitate to
>trouble the list with what might be a too amateurish inquiry.)
>
>You may recall that I am dealing with three witnesses: the Williams MS; the
>Bodleian MS (which includes versions of the Williams poems plus many more);
>and the first edition of 1633 (which is based on the Bodleian MS). I plan
to
>encode all of this textual and structural "data" in a single TEI document
>with four divisions:
>
>(1) <div id="edition">, in which all three versions of all poems are
>transcribed and tagged on a line-by-line basis using the TEI's guidelines
>for parallel segmentation;
>
>             (2) <div id="williamsMS">;
>
>             (3) <div id="bodleianMS">;
>
>             (4) <div id="1633">.
>
>It is important to keep in mind that the order of poems varies among
>witnesses, hence the need for the second, third, and fourth divisions.
These
>latter divs would each contain a series of poem instances, in the order
>proper to that particular witness, referring to the relevant data in the
>"edition." (I'm not sure I understand yet the syntax for doing this, but it
>is possible, no?) The desired goal, then, is both a comprehensive edition
>encoded with a line-by-line apparatus, as well as a way to display the
three
>witnesses individually through XSLT transformations. Another advantage is
>that the structural <milestone> tags could be included in the three witness
>divisions rather than in the "edition" div (though perhaps in order to be
>comprehensive, the "edition" div should include those tags as well).
>
>An alternative, I suppose, would be to indicate for each poem instance in
>the "edition" its order in the several witnesses, but I have no idea how
>this would be done. Another alternative would be simply to encode each
>witness separately, but this would complicate my intention to include in
the
>display interface the option of viewing simultaneously the three versions
of
>any one poem. It also goes against my encoder's intuition (god! I have one
>of those?) that a comprehensive edition, segmented line by line, is the
most
>elegant way to express the relatedness of the three witnesses.
>
>The discussion list issue here is the question of whether this scheme is
>legal. My use of the <div> tags is not descriptive - or at least it does
not
>describe the texts I'm encoding. Neither is it hierarchical with divs
nested
>within other divs. But it does describe the Digital Temple as a whole and,
>more to the point, allows me to do what I want to do in terms of
>transformations and display.
>
>Any advice is much appreciated.
>
>Sincerely,
>Rob
>
>Robert Whalen
>English
>Northern Michigan University