Re: DocBook PublishersSC meeting agenda - 23 Jan 2008

[Scott Hudson <scott.hudson@flatironssolutions.com>]

Title: Scott Hudson

Verse might work with more content than stanza. Good suggestion! At this rate, I wonder if we should have the specific poem element, or have a more general structure that would work for poetry, dialogue, songs, etc. and subclassed via a type attribute?

As for markup for contentious/variant text, I don't think we want to replicate/replace TEI. We want to support enough markup to assist publishers, not necessarily linguistic scholars...

Also, WRT dialogue, I found an interesting development in the HTML 5 spec:

• dialog can be used to mark up a conversation like this:

  <dialog>
   <dt> Costello
   <dd> Look, you gotta first baseman?
   <dt> Abbott
   <dd> Certainly.
   <dt> Costello
   <dd> Who's playing first?
   <dt> Abbott
   <dd> That's right.
   <dt> Costello
   <dd> When you pay off the first baseman every month, who gets the money?
   <dt> Abbott
   <dd> Every dollar of it. 
  </dialog>

Perhaps we want to use a structure that will map easily to this new structure in HTML 5?

Best regards,

--Scott

Hanratty, John (LNG-LON) wrote:

Re. author appearing between the title and the first stanza: as author is not part of the poem, should it be here? How about as an attribute of the poem element (I’m sure someone has already suggested this)?

 

Also, some sources define stanza more tightly than others: the UK resource http://revisioncentre.co.uk/gcse/english/poetic_terminology.html defines a stanza as “Four or more rhymed lines repeated as a unit”. Other (US) sources refer to “a unit of lines in a poem which usually share a metrical or thematic pattern” (wps.ablongman.com/wps/media/objects/130/133428/glossary.html”). I don’t know whether the term stanza is therefore suitable for blank verse/epic poetry such as Milton’s Paradise Lost, which is divided into Books which are divided (irregularly) into groups of lines of varying size.

 

There is also the common term “verse” in poetry, which seems to be commonly defined as “a unit of poetry such as a line or stanza”.

 

I therefore like the TEI approach, as it seems flexible enough to account for local variations in terminology. The below is just a quick outline of the structure of Paradise Lost, not an attempt at a generic model:

 

<poem>

<title>Paradise Lost</title>

<book number =”6”>

<title>Book VI</title>

<summary>Raphael continues to relate…</summary>

<lg group=”verse”>

<line>All night the dreadless Angel unpursu'd</line>

<line>Through Heav'ns wide Champain held his way, till Morn,</line>

…

</lg>

<lg>

<line>Servant of God, well done, well hast thou fought</line>

…

</lg>

</book>

</poem>

 

Note that in the above example, the “argument” appears in the first edition, but not in all subsequent editions.

 

A final thought – do we need any markup for contentious readings/variant text? There are many scholarly debates in this area.

 

---

From: Scott Hudson [mailto:scott.hudson@flatironssolutions.com]
Sent: 22 January 2008 20:31
To: Keith Fahlgren
Cc: docbook-publishers@lists.oasis-open.org; docbook-publishers@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: [docbook-publishers] Re: [DocBook-publishers] [docbook-publishers] DocBook PublishersSC meeting agenda - 23 Jan 2008

 

Interestingly enough, TEI uses a generic <lg> (line group) container with a type attribute to classify the groups for things like: stanza, sestet, couplet, quatrain, etc. Perhaps stanza in my example should be more generic as well?

I'm afraid para might be too big or create formatting issues? Will a linegroup or individual lines will be used enough to justify new elements, or not? Are there semantically important distinctions that should be made for lines of text?

--Scott

  Scott Hudson
  Senior XML Architect

  scott.hudson@FlatironsSolutions.com

 

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Keith Fahlgren wrote:

On 1/21/08 8:52 AM, Scott Hudson wrote:

Regarding agenda item 8, I found an interesting example at:

http://celtic.benderweb.net/webit/docs/basics/node_4.html

This may be simple enough to meet our needs? What other markup may be 

needed? I think the simple content model could be defined by:

db.poem =

element poem

{

db.poem.attlist,

db.poem.info,

db.stanza*

}

db.stanza =

element stanza

{

db.stanza.attlist,

db.line*

}

line != para?

element stanza

{

db.stanza.attlist,

db.para*,

db.formalpara*

}

<poem>

  <info>

    <title>Bitter for Sweet</title>

    <author>

      <firstname>Christina</firstname>

      <surname>Rossetti</surname>

  </info>

  <stanza>

    <para>Summer is gone with all its roses,</para>

    <para>Its sun and perfumes and sweet flowers,</para>

    <para>Its warm air and refreshing showers</para>

    <para>And even Autumn closes.</para>

  </stanza>

  <stanza>

    <para>Yea, Autumn's chilly self is going,</para>

    <para>And winter comes which is yet colder;</para>

    <para>Each day the hoar-frost waxes bolder</para>

    <para>And the last buds cease blowing.</para>

  </stanza>

</poem>

?

<poem>

  <info>

    <title>Bitter for Sweet</title>

    <author>

      <firstname>Christina</firstname>

      <surname>Rossetti</surname>

  </info>

  <stanza>

    <para>Summer is gone with all its roses,</para>

    <para>Its sun and perfumes and sweet flowers,</para>

    <para>Its warm air and refreshing showers</para>

    <para>And even Autumn closes.</para>

  </stanza>

  <stanza>

    <para>Yea, Autumn's chilly self is going,</para>

    <para>And winter comes which is yet colder;</para>

    <para>Each day the hoar-frost waxes bolder</para>

    <para>And the last buds cease blowing.</para>

  </stanza>

</poem>

Keith

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