Re: announcement and call

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

On 11/15/2013 11:31 AM, Keith J. Schultz wrote:
> Hi Thomas,
>
>
> Am 14.11.2013 um 21:55 schrieb Thomas A. Schmitz <thomas.schmitz@uni-bonn.de>:
>
>> On 11/14/2013 09:40 PM, Philipp Gesang wrote:
>>> What I’d consider the most pressing issue, pertaining both to
>>> Context and to TeX as a whole, would be text streams a.k.a.
>>> parallel typesetting. It was discussed on the list a couple times
>>> already and at one point someone collected examples [1]. Also, I
>>> sketched the current state of parallel texts elsewhere [2].
>>
>> For certain values of "pressing" :-) Two pessimistic remarks about that: (1) I experimented with a mechanism that Hans build for mkii a while ago, and I found it difficult to decide how to define what was expected of parallel typesetting. In the end, I wasn't convinced that an entirely automated version was possible at all. (2) I'm afraid that's not part of the present project and is related neither to critical editions nor to bibliographies.
>
> I have to strongly disagree with you here. A critical edition is only a specialized case of parallel texts! You two or more editions that are contrasted/compared to each other.
> Naturally, it must be bibliographically annotated and there are the comments of the author of the critical edition.
>
> The  editions have to be typeset in parallel. There are many ways how an author can lay this out. In the far past it was common just to stack the contrasted versions on top of
> each other! Very very ugly. Lots of examples in libraries. More recent ways are to use column. Yet, the more editions involved the harder it is to place on one page. For such cases
> it would be best to spread them across two facing pages.
>
> The problem with the two page setup is synchronizing the comments, notes, discussion of the critical edition's author. For a half way pleasing layout these should interplaced between the contrasted editions across the two pages. Yes, not an easy task.

a lot depends on proper coding ... typesetting parallel texts is not per 
se the same as multiple streams ... it all depends on what one wants to 
achieve

also, if > 1 page is used then we should not limit to 2 pages (or 
columns) in parallel

> I agree that it is hard to automate the synchronization of text passages. The only viable approach would be at the paragraph level. A line level approach can only be achieved by
> interaction of the author of the critical edition with synchronization marks of some sort inside the editions.

indeed. one cannot have the best of all worlds (perfect justification, 
perfect note handling, perfect synchronization) because the solition 
space gets too small

(one thing Thomas and I discussed shortly is more advanced pdf's with 
more embedded info and so ... something for later)

we also need to look into ebook like things ...

> Early, in my education in Computer Linguistics, decades ago, we had project where we wrote a program for entry of critical editions. The editions/texts and comments were
> entered in parallel on the tty-terminal screen and stored in a database. At that time we where no interested in fancy output and used a simple stacked output.
>
> As you probably know yourself, it is the entry and synchronization of the editions that  is the problem an not as much the layout itself, though that is hard enough by itself.
> I do not see any way to do this in a normal linear single pass process. The question is in how far ConTeXt can support this task.
 > ...

time, motivation, etc ...

> I have just a brain stormed possible starting point. It as you can see it has quite some felixiblity as to how the texts
> is entered and ConTeXt does some rearranging during typesetting.
>
> One type of critical edition we have not discussed is when the author whats to work on a word basis. But, that is even a bigger can
> of worms for collating the data/texts.
>
> Most of what I have describe it probably obvious to you, yet

well, keep collecting demands and examples ... best that we know what is 
needed (and by how many people, for how many years to come, as it makes 
no sense to develop code that is used once and then discarded because 
one moves to newer technologies) ...

we also need to keep in mind that this kind of things are author driven 
as publishers are not paying for this kind of things nor willing to 
invest / support development of tools (if they are interested in 
anything else than 25-50% profits at all).

Hans

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                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
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