Category

XML

BAND, XML

The Problem of Metamarks

This semester we’re looking at some of the unique features of the Blake marginalia, and some of the challenges of representing them accurately with TEI elements. One element we’re considering is <metamark>. But what exactly is a metamark?

This is how it’s described on the main website, which is frequently repeated elsewhere online:

<metamark> contains or describes any kind of graphic or written signal within a document the function of which is to determine how it should be read rather than forming part of the actual content of the document.

Note the extreme ambiguity of this description, e.g. about what the ‘it’ actually means. The metamark is a graphic or signal which is supposed to determine how it should be read — ‘it’, meaning of course not the metamark but the document, in which you find the metamark. Not that this brief description gives any indication as to what limits or bounds that ‘document’ or what kind of scope it has for telling the reader how this document (the paragraph, the page, the chapter?) should be read.

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BATS, XML

Sisyphus and Consistency

My recent projects as Editorial Assistant at the William Blake Archive have shared a mission: to ensure the consistency of the Archive’s text. My last project was to go through the Blake Archive Documents (BADs) and capitalize the C’s, P’s, and O’s in the words “Copy,” “Plate,” and “Object” (and their plurals) whenever they refer to specific copies, plates, or objects. My current project is to enter Bob Essick’s revisions to the lists of related works for each object, so that when the redesigned Archive is unveiled, it will have the most comprehensive, accurate, and consistent information possible.

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BAND, XML

Laocoön and Languages

At least twice in the last month or so, I have found myself transcribing an object that contains writing in a language other than English. Both times I was told that the best way to find out how to handle the foreign language text would be to find an earlier instance of an object with such text on it and look at the BAD file for that object. Laocoön has become the go-to source when I go looking for a precedent for transcription of foreign language text.

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BAND, XML

Four Zoas: In the Zone

The past few weeks have seen considerable progress in the development of our revised Four Zoas schema. As we expand our sample set of objects, we’re testing our XML structure in new situations and uncovering new complications. The good news: our <stage> approach to modeling layered revisions in the manuscript has held up well when applied to these new objects. Whenever difficulty arises, it’s the usual editorial problem of reading a messy manuscript. But the bad news: our <zone> element has struggled to keep up.

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BAND, Uncategorized, XML

Revisiting Choice Tags in Poetical Sketches

For the past few months I’ve been tackling the 72-object Poetical Sketches, one of only two of Blake’s literary works printed using conventional typesetting (the other is French Revolution). Thanks to the previous work of Ali and Megan Wilson, my job as a “pre-proofer” has become much easier. The pre-proofing process involves checking the spacing and format of each object on various browsers (also known as deuglification); reviewing line notes for errors; verifying the inclusion of the original page numbers on each object (<physnumber>); adding more specific attributes for headers (ex. <texthead type=“title”>); and, of course, adding/modifying choice tags based on our updated tag set.

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BAND, XML

Once More Unto the Breach, Dear Friends

We’ve blogged a few times about our progress with the Four Zoas encoding project, mostly recounting our efforts to develop a more flexible and dynamic schema as well as create an experimental display that takes advantage of our new XML elements. This progress has been slow but steady, and after a rigorous round of development focusing on a single difficult object, we’re ready to test our work across more objects and expand the schema to incorporate more textual features.

So as a theatrical monarch once said, “once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.” Except, I can promise it will be more than just once

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BATS, XML

Is That a Rock or a Severed Head? Creating Textual Tags for Blake’s Pen and Ink Drawings

The William Blake Archive recently published seventeen pen and ink drawings by Blake that span the majority of his artistic career. As one of the art historians on staff at the WBA, I was tasked with the responsibility of creating XML documents to accompany each of the works—files that we call Blake Archive Documents or BADs. These BADs are incredibly important as they include not only textual descriptions of the drawings but also tagged search terms, which enable the new drawings to be plugged into the existing search function of the WBA.

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Digital Humanities, XML

DHSI and the Four Zoas: Part 1

In June, I went to the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) in Victoria, BC. I have a whole other post in my head about the ferry journey from Seattle to Victoria (beautiful!), the fish tacones at Red Fish Blue Fish (delicious!) and the nineteenth-century architecture of the city (magnificent!), but for now I’ll stick to the subject at hand: encoding the Four Zoas.

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