Marcello Perathoner <marcello@perathoner.de> wrote:
Lee Passey wrote:
I understand that creating a file format which could be viewed without further processing was not your intention, but now that we have some evidence that suggests that it is a real possiblity is there any reason _not_ to pursue that possiblity, especially if it only requires adding three lines to the source (and making sure that all the dtd's are accessible)?
Supporting CSS styling will add another complexity layer to an already overly complex thing. A software architect has to leave things out to make the design implementable.
Adding three lines to the template file adds complexity?
Also, things like footnotes are impossible with CSS. So why bother?
I've never had any problems with footnotes and CSS. But the real key is to separate the TEI and the CSS, even at a conceptual level. I would never suggest creating a TEI file with the assumption that it would be rendered in conjunction with some specific CSS file, or indeed assuming that it will have some specific rendering at all. I recommend creating TEI files that are both valid and correct with regard to the TEI spec and not be concerned at all about how it might be rendered. On the other hand, simple modifications which will enable other people and applications to select a rendering should be acceptable if it's not a hinderance to the primary goal of producing valid and correct TEI.
In any case, it doesn't matter which encoding is used, so long as it is not misrepresented in the <?xml ...> declaration.
Both the TEI and the XHTML file are correct. I don't know why it doesn't work for you.
I think I may. I downloaded the ZIP archive of the file to be sure that there were no issues involving Apache or Firefox. After extracting the contents, and before touching the file with any other application, I did a hexdump on the file. Sure enough, it was valid UTF-8 encoding. I don't know which of my editors did the conversion, but I suspect it was Microsoft's XML editor which ships as part of of Visual Studio Dot Net. I also suspect that the conversion was not to iso-8859-1 but to win-1252, which is indistinquishable from 8859-1 except in the range of 128-159. The HTML editor that shipped with earlier versions of Visual C++ was known to do this conversion under the covers and without warning. After all, if you're running on a version of Microsoft Windows you're obviously going to want to be using Microsoft's own character mappings, right?
As part of my CSS experimentation, I set the display setting for the <tei-header> element to "none", because while I think the data is important, I'm not particularly interested in seeing it when I'm reading. When I did this, I thought I lost the title of the book because it only appears in the <tei-header> element. I discovered later the title was repeated in the <front> element, identified as a <head>er. As I read the TEI spec, (and I am by no means well-versed) I believe that there should also exist a <titlePage> element which should be part of the <front>, and which should contain all the information traditionally found on the title page of a book.
That is for the encoder to decide. If the title page is interesting enough to warrant a separate encoding, she will use <titlePage> etc. to mark it up.
Indeed. And as Mr. Hutchinson is the encoder, I'm suggesting he ought to conside it.
If the title page is just plain boring you can generate a standard title page with <divGen type="titlepage">. This will pull all data out of the <teiHeader> and save you the trouble.
There are a lot of such shortcuts implemented like <divGen type="toc"> and <divGen type="footnotes">.
I'm not terribly enamored with <divGen> tags, because it seems to rely on software that so far is largely unimplemented. _I_ wouldn't recommend its use, but it _is_ part of the spec...
I also note that you encoded the glossary at the end of the work with <p> tags (naughty, naughty). Based on what I saw in the TEI docs I would have encoded it as follows:
<div type="glossary"> <head>Glossary</head> <list type="gloss"> <label>'Abdu'l-Bahá</label> <gloss>The "Servant of Bahá", Abbás Effendi (1844-1921), the eldest son and appointed Successor of Bahá'u'lláh, and the Centre of His Covenant.</gloss>
And it wouldn't have validated because gloss has no business inside list.
True. I made the same mistake that Mr. Hutchinson did with the <title> element: assuming that an element designed to indicate usage was instead structural. Mr. Hutchinson's orignal was valid but incorrect (because the textual fragments he was dealing with were not paragraphs). My example was correct but invalid (because <gloss> cannot appear within lists). By encapsulating the <gloss> elements with <item> elements the glossary would become both correct _and_ valid. (My thanks to Mr. Noring for posting the links to the relevant portions of the spec so I don't have to.)