Transcription guidelines field: have a controled vocabulary of values

[PonteIneptique]

This one has been in my head for quite a long time.

Right now, we have free text, which means it is not machine actionable. I'd like to have the ability to populate a list of acceptable value, such as Resolved Abbreviation, Unresolved Abbreviation, Corrected Spelling, Original Spelling, Special Character used (eg. MUFI), things like that. It would go alongside the transcription guidelines but would make the whole thing a little more machine actionable.

[gabays]

True. This complicated though. What people understand as "original" varies a lot: some people consider the dissimilation of i/j as faithful to the original, some don't… corrected is somewhat ambiguous though, because you can

• correct a mistake in the document while transcribing
• "correct" the spelling, which is more a "linguistic normalisation" to me

Abbréviations and special characters make more sense to me because it is more factual

[PonteIneptique]

I think we can have many values, with descriptions, and Dissimilation of i/j for example is for example one. We "just" need to make a list, this is a first step.

[gabays]

It might be a rabbit hole… i/j, but also u/v, but then what do you do with s/ſ, etc.?

[PonteIneptique]

I'd actually cover those. u/v i/j go together generally, s/S less. So I'd have an entry for these specifically

[PonteIneptique]

• Resolved Abbreviation / Unresolved Abbreviation
• Corrected Spelling (If orthographic mistakes are found, or printing error, you corrected them) / Original Spelling (Text copied as is)
• Special Character used (MUFI)
• Medieval Latin Scripts: Differentiated u-v &i-j / Kept original use of u-v & i-j
• Medieval and Mordern Latin Scripts: Differentiated s/S / Only small s
• Original Spacing / Spacing according to modern standards

[PonteIneptique]

The idea is to make the catalog as machine actionable as possible. If it means somewhat fine-grained values, then we go for it.

[gabays]

• Dissimilation i/j and u/v are not medieval, it exists in modern French
• Difference round s and long s can be seen as a glyph problem (two "shapes" for the same letter). It goes together with "n plongeant", "m plongeant", etc (la lettre dont le dernier jambage descend sous la ligne d'écriture pour faire simple, ce qui permet au copiste d'indiquer que le mot se termine, mais en gros ça reste un m, juste d'une forme différente. Je sais pas dire techniquement ça en anglais)
• I would differentiate original and normalised, both can be potentially corrected

[PonteIneptique]

So, I'd keep s/S as a single category, because it's something a "lot" of people are talking about, and it's a known problem in modern OCR systems. Unlike m / n
So you would have

• Corrected spelling / Original spelling / Normalized spelling ? Could you make a parenthesis for each choice to make things clearer ? I wonder if it could not be "Corrected and/or normalized spelling" but tell me

I'd actually add the option Ligatures kept which span in multiple scripts AFAIK.

[gabays]

Corrected spelling / Original spelling / Normalized spelling ? No: the original spelling or the normalised spelling can both be corrected. I would go for:

• original/modified (i.e. as diplomatic as possible or editorial interventions)
• corrected/not corrected (i.e. obvious errors in the text are corrected while transcribing)

[PonteIneptique]

I would prefer a long answer with a more descriptive thingie (like the parenthesis I wrote up there, you can give examples :D )

[gabays]

I don't get how it would look like at the end with the parenthesis