Re: Critical Editions?

[Hans Hagen via ntg-context <ntg-context@ntg.nl>]

On 1/7/2022 6:25 PM, hanneder--- via ntg-context wrote:
> 
> Probably the situation in South Asian Studies (Indology) is peculiar.
> As I indicated, there are mostly no  budgets for book typesetting in 
> Indology and
> I know of no real expert for typesetting in this field. In other words, 
> the authors
> have do it themselves, usually in Word etc., but some do use TeX etc. 
> Our publications
> series (Indologica Marpurgensia) is, for instance, all done with LaTeX, 
> as are my publications
> with Harrassowitz, which is the largest publisher in our field in 
> Germany. There is no institution
> offering typesetting of Sanskrit editions, because there is no 
> commercial interest in it and I
> think there is no expertise for this (especially when Indian scripts are 
> used instead of transliteration).

there was a time that publishers had some pride in offering low volume 
publications and paid for that by large volume succes stories ... but 
those were real publishers (persons, not companies)

> Journals are different. Indological journals published by Brill use TeX 
> internally, which is convenient,
> but most others know only Word (->InDesign). That is the situation, 
> frustrating in a way, but it also
> gives some freedom for using TeX (and, sadly, creating one's own 
> dilettantic designs).
that brings me to the question:

   what do those who are independent from publishers really
   want in a typeseting system .. not bound by what a specific
   publisher with no real interest but profit demands

i'm often puzzled by the fact that in spite of what technology (and 
thereby tex) makes possible is not used to its full extend .. (my 
favourite exmaple: why go along the troublesome accessibility path 
instead of providing plenty variants that suit specific users and 
publish the sources so that those interested in it can do it ... 
interestingly easy audio inclusion was dropped from pdf instead of 
adding means to attach that to a stretch of text) .. i think publishers 
were never really interested in those things (no reserch lab anyway)

so ... what features would make *you* happy if you didn't have to take 
publishing (which doesn't happen) and tradition (imposed by those who 
don't publish your work anyway) into account but could produce the best 
for your reader

Hans

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