change bars

Lou Burnard (lou@vax.ox.ac.uk)
Fri, 6 Aug 1993 19:55:07 +0200


If you want to encode the things that a browser would probably like to
render using change bars in a TEI conformant way, one simple method
would be to use the tags for editorial changes to mark the things
and specify (with REND) what you want done by the browser.

For example:

.... blah blah <add resp=V1.1 rend=sidebar> Not. </add> blah blah

or similarly

.... blah blah <del resp=V1.1 rend=sidebar> Not. </del> blah blah

This may look like a slightly strange use for these tags, which were
designed for use when transcribing from manuscripts, but I think
legitimate. Problems arise if the thing you want to add or delete spans
other elements. The following, for example, is ILLEGAL

<p> this para starts out well but
<del resp=V1.2> from here on into the next
<p> paragraph is a load of nonsense which is why it's been
deleted and </del> ends suddenly.

The easiest (of several) methods suggested by the TEI for dealing with
this is to use the <addspan> element thusly:

<p> this para starts out well but
<delspan resp=V1.2 to=XY123> from here on into the next
<p> paragraph is a load of nonsense which is why it's been
deleted and <anchor id=XY123> ends suddenly.

Note the use of the TEI <anchor> element -- no relation to anything
HTMLers know under a similar name -- to mark a point in the document,
solely so that it can have an identifier attached to it, so that some
other element (the <delspan>) can point to it.

Lou