On 20-7-2012 17:41, Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:

This may be a bit more difficult, because it involves thinking about proper input syntax. How do you want to mark this passage? If you can come up with clean and unequivocal syntax and demonstrate it in an example, your chances aren't too bad. However, I mean really clean syntax, not just a kludge to give you the output you want. Ideally, have a look at the TEI syntax. IMO, this is the best way to go; I don't think TeX is a good input format for critical editions. If you can come up with a good mapping TEI --> ConTeXt --> output, that would facilitate things.

Actually ranges have always been supported (as we needed in the previous century already for referring to passages in texts where students had to comment on): \definelinenote[linenote] % was commented but will be predefined \starttext \setuplinenumbering[distance=2em] \setuplinenote [linenote] [distance=2em,rule=off,frame=on,framecolor=darkred] \startlinenumbering test test test \dorecurse{40}{test }. \linenote {A simple linenote does not have a number range} \startlinenote [one] {A linenote environment has a range that covers the first line of an environment up to the last.} \dorecurse{40}{test }. \stoplinenote [one] \linenote {A simple linenote does not have a number range} \dorecurse{30}{test }\removeunwantedspaces. \stoplinenumbering \stoptext but as you mention the interface is a bit problematic as start/stop is not nice when being nested: \let\fromlinenote\startlinenote \let\tolinenote \stoplinenote \startlinenumbering test test test \dorecurse{40}{test }. \linenote {A simple linenote does not have a number range} \fromlinenote [two] {A linenote environment has a range that covers the first line of an environment up to the last.} \dorecurse{40}{test }. \fromlinenote [three]{However, nesting can be mixed.}\dorecurse{40}{test }. \tolinenote [two] \dorecurse{40}{test }. \tolinenote [three] \linenote {A simple linenote does not have a number range} \dorecurse{30}{test }\removeunwantedspaces. \stoplinenumbering \stoptext Maybe I should add those commands. Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------

I'm trying to get straight in my head what critical-edition-related commands are already implemented in ConTeXt. Implemented: (a) footnotes on specific lines, specified inline: \linenote{note text} (b) ditto on line ranges: \startlinenote[tag]{note text} ... \stoplinenote[tag] (c) tag a line and refer to it later in text: \someline[tag]; refer back with \inline[tag] or \inlinerange[tag] (the former has a spurious space before the number). The low-level backreferences are \in[lr:b:tag] and \in[lr:e:tag]; see page-lin.mkiv (d) ditto for line ranges: \startlines[tag] ... \stoplines[tag]; refer to these with \inlinerange[tag]. Not implemented AFAIK: (e) tag a line, but write the linenote on it later; at the end of the stanza or the quotation, say. Nice to keep notes from overpowering the text in the source code.). (f) ditto for line ranges This would have the added advantage that you could place tags in the text according to its contents, and then use those tags for both footnotes and textual references. Hans wrote:

but as you mention the interface is a bit problematic as start/stop is not nice when being nested

Do you mean it doesn't look nice, or is it so that nesting or interleaving \startlinenote[tag] ... \stoplinenote[tag] environments causes problems because the commands start with \start... and \stop...? If looks are the only problem, I think that is a problem with interleaving environments; no matter whether you call them \startlinenote...\stoplinenote, or \fromlinenote...\tolinenote. And in that case, I think consistently naming environment commands \start...\stop... is a very valuable thing, and should get priority. Regards, Sietse Sietse Brouwer

On 07/20/2012 08:01 PM, Wolfgang Schuster wrote:

Hans speaks about something like this

\startone … \starttwo … \stopone … \stopone

where environment ranges overlap.

And to explain that a bit: it's not merely "ugly." If all you want is the printed book, you don't care about the ugliness and simply code this way to get the desired output. However, we are in the 21st century. We should be beyond the point where a critical edition is the printed text, we should think of the typeset result as just one way of representing the logical structure of the edition. With a syntax as the one Wolfgang shows above, it is difficult for most parsers to understand what is meant. Which means most ways of representing such a structure will fail because it's not a consistent logical construct. And yes, as Pablo pointed out, TEI itself hasn't reached a clear conclusion on such points, and they are specialists who have been working on these problems for quite a while... Thomas

On 20/07/12 22:41, Hans Hagen wrote:

On 20-7-2012 20:21, Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:

...

[...] And to explain that a bit: it's not merely "ugly." If all you want is the printed book, you don't care about the ugliness and simply code this way to get the desired output. However, we are in the 21st century. We should be beyond the point where a critical edition is the printed text, we should think of the typeset result as just one way of representing the logical structure of the edition. With a syntax as the one Wolfgang shows above, it is difficult for most parsers to understand what is meant. Which means most ways of representing such a structure will fail because it's not a consistent logical construct. And yes, as Pablo pointed out, TEI itself hasn't reached a clear conclusion on such points, and they are specialists who have been working on these problems for quite a while...

In xml one could do

<note tag="bla" range="yes">some text</note> ..... <note tag="bla"/>

i.e. use an empty element to indicate a matching end.

Hans, thanks for your reply. TEI would propose something like this for a just invented example (not 100% sure TEI encoding right, but I think it is [a cheat sheet on critical apparatuses can be found at http://marjorie.burghart.online.fr/?q=en/content/tei-critical-apparatus-chea...]): <p>Entia non sunt multiplicanda <app> <lem>praeter necessitatem</lem> <rdg wit="#H">sine necessitate</lem> </app> </p> Which can be typeset with ConTeXt: \mainlanguage[la] \definelinenote[linenote] \starttext \startlinenumbering Entia non sunt multiplicanda \startlinenote[one]{praeter necessitatem] sine necessitate H} praeter necessitatem \stoplinenote[one]. \stoplinenumbering \stoptext If I'm not wrong, I'm afraid there might be a bug here, since there is no space between «multiplicanda» and «praeter» in the body. I don't know how ConTeXt parses XML directly, but I think unless a counter (or an unique ID) is entered, problems might arise to distinguish between different critical annotations. (Sorry if that was obvious.) BTW, how about the option to only display the number from line on the first linenote if many linenotes coming from the same line? I only want to know whether this feature could be considered for inclusion in ConTeXt in the future. Many thanks for your help, Pablo -- http://www.ousia.tk

[If this is considered too off-topic for this list, please ignore this mail. My main point has still something to do with ConTeXt, but I guess this discussion shouldn't be continued on the list.] On 07/22/2012 08:07 PM, Pablo Rodríguez wrote:

...

And to explain that a bit: it's not merely "ugly." If all you want is

...

the printed book, you don't care about the ugliness and simply code this way to get the desired output. However, we are in the 21st century. We should be beyond the point where a critical edition is the printed text, we should think of the typeset result as just one way of representing the logical structure of the edition. With a syntax as the one Wolfgang shows above, it is difficult for most parsers to understand what is meant. Which means most ways of representing such a structure will fail because it's not a consistent logical construct. And yes, as Pablo pointed out, TEI itself hasn't reached a clear conclusion on such points, and they are specialists who have been working on these problems for quite a while... Thomas, many thanks for your reply.

You are the real expert on this topic. I don't really know why there are so many people from TEI working on textual variants, but my guess is that this might be also related to the different needs each of them might face for each kind of texts. Probably the needs to critically edit an ancient Greek or Latin author might differ with the ones for an early modern (or even contemporary) English or German author.

I'm not an expert at all, but I'm trying to put together a research project that would help us make some progress here. But your assumption is basically correct: there are many different philologies with different habits and norms, and TEI has to take that into account.

There is another issue that I would like to discuss. My question is what changes in a critical edition with no page model. I don't mean that critical editions need to be printed (it isn't a paper-based model), but I'm not so sure they can be properly represented without a page model. So, if I'm not wrong, it isn't only a question of data representation, but it is related to the logic of the text structure itself.

Some have characterized the electronic text as infinite, in opposition to a page-based text that by definition finite. XML is a good example of a human-readable text, but this human-readability is relevant because of a prior machine-readability. XML is meaningful and useful for non-coders as source code to generate a human-understandable representation of text.

Footnotes can be displayed not using a page model, because reference is on both the body and the note texts. A hyperlink is the right way to link each other. So, an infinite text is not a problem. The footnote doesn't need to be on the same page (as in a printed book), because there is a way to go to the note and back to the text (as on the physical book).

But linenotes are different. The reference is on the note, but not on the body. The same line can have many linenotes. And the same word or passage can be referenced in more than one apparatus simultaneously. Linenotes work on a page model, because all relevant information is given at a glance. Looking at a page, one knows which words of text passages have relevant information on the apparatus(es). Using the model of the infinite text, there are some issues, unless one reconstructs the page model on a screen model (I mean, that each portion of body text displayed in the screen has also the apparatus(es) included on that same screen). These issues are: which words or text passages have additional information, how to distinguish between references to different apparatuses and how to access to each of these different apparatuses. Maybe marking the text with different features might be a way to distinguish them (colors, underline or a mixture of both). And enabling contextual information is the way to workaround these issues. But I wonder how this is really helpful in practice.

Sorry, but I'm afraid I'm a bit skeptical about this. Probably I'm wrong, but I think it will take some time before having an ePub file containing the electronic version of a critical edition.

I think you misunderstand. I'm absolutely not interested in epub. I'm not arguing against printed output per se (or electronic representations of printed output such as pdf). But it has severe limitations that we need to transcend. I take as an example the text that I'm currently re-reading, Ovid's Metamorphoses in the new edition by R. Tarrant, published in 2004. There are more than 400 complete medieval manuscripts of this text. As things stand now, with a printed edition, no editor can investigate all of them. No editor can record in his apparatus the readings of all the manuscripts he has consulted. No editor can record all the data of the secondary transmission (quotations, allusions, translations etc.) But Tarrant has certainly much more information available than he can include in his edition. Some of it is published in his articles and books, some of it is included in the private collations of manuscripts which he produced in order to produce his edition. When he finishes his career and (I hesitate to write this since he's a friend of mine) his life, most of this will be lost forever. Now I describe the way I would like to see a critical edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses organized: there is a single huge database (as things stand now, most probably an xml file) which contains every reading in every manuscript. This file resides in some sort of version control repository, let's say it uses git. Scholars have write access to this repository and are constantly filling in new information. Some sort of peer review process decides which changes will be pushed to the master repository. Proper markup allows them to fill in anything they consider important: questions of transmission and textual criticism, grammatical, metrical, linguistic points. Every single passage is linked against images of all the manuscripts, so if you're reading this on a device with access to the web, one click will bring up a picture of the corresponding passage in every manuscript you want. If you want to see the text of manuscript X, one click will give you that text. Or the text and apparatus of all 15th-century manuscripts in French libraries. Or all lines displaying a certain metrical structure. (That's why the proper xml structure is so important.) I'm absolutely convinced that having this information in this sort of format will allow us to make huge progress in textual criticism (think of the programs that simulate evolutionary development in biomedicine and apply those to our database!) This does not mean that printed editions will become useless. If an accomplished scholar with years of experience in Ovid wants to publish his edition, he will simply pull the repository at a given moment, he will then decide what will go into his text and his apparatus (i don't think that machines will ever be any better than human beings with regard to critical judgment), and he will then have the result printed. But again: the printed book will only be a representation of the information, it will not be identical to the information. With the proper tools, an editor can decide what this representation should look like, and that's where considerations about several apparatuses, note types, indexes and the organization of information come into play. And that's the area where I see ConTeXt playing an important role because of its powerful potential to process xml, to produce interactive documents, to combine text and illustrations. For the time being, this is a dream, but I'm optimistic we will approach this dream, slowly, but steadily. In order to do this, however, we have to understand that the printed book is just a tool, not the end in itself. All best Thomas

On 07/22/2015 09:26 PM, Talal wrote:

[...] I would like to be able to automate (through macros) the making of a critical apparatus' note. This is for two reasons. First, the body text and the lemma in the note below should be identical: as such, they ideally not have to be typed twice, as it introduces the possibility of error. Furthermore, if one manually writes out \linenote{Lemma ] Comment} in the body of the text, you forego the separation of content and style, since the separator ] has been hardcoded in.

Hi Talal, I wonder whether creating a new thread should be the right thing to do. The original thread is three years old. Anyway, this may help you (it isn’t my original code): \unexpanded\def\doVariant#1#2#3% {\startlinenote[#1]{#2] #3}#2\stoplinenote[#1]} \newcounter\countvariants \unexpanded\def\variant {\doglobal\increment\countvariants \normalexpanded{\doVariant{Varia:\countvariants}}} \starttext \startlinenumbering \dorecurse{20}{\variant{donald e knuth}{herman zapf} } \stoplinenumbering \stoptext BTW, it has a “minor issue”: hyphenation doesn’t work in the body text It works fine in the notes. I reported this, but I’m afraid it hasn’t been solved. Just in case it helps, Pablo -- http://www.ousia.tk

On 07/22/2015 11:33 PM, talazem@fastmail.fm wrote:

Dear Pablo,

Thank you very much for what you proposed — it did work indeed. I tried to achieve the same at some length this afternoon. I think I understand what is going on in the first macro, but wouldn’t have been able to arrive at the the second one for \variant, or the counter (and still don’t fully understand it). Thanks again.

Dear Talal, well, both macros come from Hans... I’m afraid I’m not smart enough for that code ;-). BTW, I just accidentally discovered a possible fix for the hyphenation issue (although I’m not sure it is a bug itself). I will open another thread to discuss that with the experts. Pablo -- http://www.ousia.tk

On 20/07/12 17:41, Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:

Just a few comments on this helpful mail:

Thank you very much for your reply, Thomas.

On 07/19/2012 12:57 PM, MANUEL GONZALEZ SUAREZ wrote:

...

I'm not a classical philologist, but the way ConTeXt works is much clearer than ledmac to me (although I have only tested ledmac for a couple of days).

I haven't looked at ledmac too closely, and of course I'm a huge fan of ConTeXt; nevertheless, we shouldn't promise too much: for the time being, ledmac provides a pretty good working environment which you can just use; ConTeXt offers a much better overall syntax and programming interface, but right now, it's more of a DIY experience when it comes to critical editions. There is no ready drop-in replacement for ledmac

I must admit that I didn't get ledmac to do some of the documented tricks. I haven't tried much, but some code didn't work.

...

But there are two features from ledmac that aren't available in ConTeXt (or at least I don't know how to achieve them):

-ConTeXt numbers all linenotes that come from the same line and there seems to be no way to limit number in the apparatus to only the first linenote from that line.

This is something that can be fixed, I assume. The best you could do: make a small example file, explain what output you expect and what you get, and ask Hans nicely if he can implement this. Chances are he'll reply "on a rainy Sunday afternoon, maybe," and you'll have to give him a couple of weeks and gently remind him. He (or the Wolfgang) will be willing and helpful, but of course time is a finite resource. So: the better and clearer and shorter your example, the more polite your request, the better your chances to see this implemented.

My minimal example is this: \definelinenote[lnote] \setuplinenote[lnote][rule=off,paragraph=yes,numbercommand=,inbetween=\qquad] \setupdescriptions[lnote][display=yes,location=serried,distance=1em] \starttext \startlinenumbering This\lnote{That} is\lnote{was} imposible\lnote{possible}. \stoplinenumbering \stoptext which gives as result something like: 1 This 1 was 1 impossible And the output I would like to have is: 1 This was impossible I mean, what it would be extremely useful to have is an option to avoid that the line number and the space after (distance from \setupdescriptions) could be disabled after the first linenote from that same line.

...

-From the way linenotes are implemented, linenotes mark a point in the body text, but not a text passage, so it seems to be impossible to refer to a passage that is typeset in different lines (such as 2-3).

This may be a bit more difficult, because it involves thinking about proper input syntax. How do you want to mark this passage? If you can come up with clean and unequivocal syntax and demonstrate it in an example, your chances aren't too bad. However, I mean really clean syntax, not just a kludge to give you the output you want. Ideally, have a look at the TEI syntax. IMO, this is the best way to go; I don't think TeX is a good input format for critical editions. If you can come up with a good mapping TEI --> ConTeXt --> output, that would facilitate things.

A clear syntax might be not so easy not being a philologist at all (classical or not). As far as I understand, ledmac syntax should be left aside. There was a syntax proposal from Idris Hamid for this at section 4.2 http://meeting.contextgarden.net/2007/share/idris/cr-apparatus.pdf. Isn't this syntax right? But after just consulting the TEI Guidelines on critical apparatus, I must admit that I would need more experience typesetting critical editions to provide a meaningful example. Consider that even TEI has a working group on critical apparatus to improve the TEI syntax and possibilities.

Just my personal opinions; I'm not a spokesperson for ConTeXt in any way!

I know these are your personal opinions. Sorry for not being able to provide a second example and many thanks for your help, Pablo -- http://www.ousia.tk