[MEI-L] symbol/symbolDef

Wed Mar 21 08:54:55 CET 2012

2012/3/20 Roland, Perry (pdr4h) <pdr4h at eservices.virginia.edu>:
>> When talking with the Corpus monodicum people from Würzburg about
>> encoding their data in MEI, the problem occured that occansionally
>> they find neumes that they cannot interpret (yet).  However, those
>> neumes aren't just sloppily written, they clearly manifest a certain
>> kind of symbol as it is found repeatedly (for example within the works
>> of a certain scribe).  @facs doesn't express this, while @altsym could
>> do.
>
> Please forgive me, but I don't understand what you're trying to say.  @facs doesn't express what?  The fact that they can't / don't want to say what a certain symbol is / means?  What does @altsym do in this case that @facs doesn't?
>
> Whatever "it" is, @facs points to a region of an image and says "there it is", while @altsym points to a vector graphic and says "this is how you draw it".  Neither of these attributes has anything to do with interpretation.
>
> Both of these require the encoder to make a decision about what "it" is by choosing an MEI element.  So, for a neume one can say
>
> <neume @facs="d1" altsym="us1"/>
> <!-- This is a neume, it's there at "d1", and instructions for rendering it are at "us1" -->
>
> Are you wanting <symbol> to function as a generic marker for an unknown sign?  That is, if a symbol's meaning is unknown, then are you looking for markup like --
>
> <symbol @facs="d1 d2 d3 d4 d5"/>
>
> saying, in effect, "I don't know what this thing is, but it occurs 5 times"?

No, I was more thinking about something like this:

<mei xmlns="http://www.music-encoding.org/ns/mei">
  <meiHead>
    <fileDesc>
      <titleStmt>
        <title/>
      </titleStmt>
      <pubStmt/>
      <sourceDesc>
        <source>
          <physDesc>
            <handList>
              <hand xml:id="handB">
                <name>Beta</name>
              </hand>
              <hand xml:id="handC">
                <name>Gamma</name>
              </hand>
            </handList>
          </physDesc>
          <history>
            <creation>
              <geogName xml:id="mon_Alpha">monastery Alpha</geogName>
            </creation>
          </history>
        </source>
      </sourceDesc>
    </fileDesc>
  </meiHead>
  <music>
    <facsimile>
      <surface>
        <graphic target="facsimile00001.jpg"/>
        <zone data="#symbolAB123_description"
xml:id="symbolAB123_example" ulx="180" uly="66"
          lrx="220" lry="81"/>
        <zone data="#symbolCD456_description"
xml:id="symbolCD456_example" ulx="3475" uly="1290"
          lrx="3510" lry="1302"/>
      </surface>
    </facsimile>
    <body>
      <mdiv>
        <score>
          <scoreDef>
            <symbolTable>
              <symbolDef xml:id="symbolAB123">
                <symbol facs="#symbolAB123_example"/>
              </symbolDef>
              <symbolDef xml:id="symbolCD456">
                <symbol facs="#symbolCD456_description"/>
              </symbolDef>
            </symbolTable>
          </scoreDef>
          <annot startid="#symbolAB123">
            This symbol can be found in sources stemming from <ref
target="#mon_Alpha">monastery Alpha</ref>
            and is used by hands <ref target="#handB">Beta</ref> and
<ref target="#handC">Gamma</ref>.
            It frequently appears after a clivis. It's meaning is unknown.
          </annot>
          <annot startid="#symbolCD456">
            <!-- Something interesting about this symbol -->
          </annot>
          <section>
            <staff>
              <layer>
                <syllable>
                  <syl>bla</syl>
                  <uneume name="clivis"/>
                  <uneume altsym="#symbolAB123"/>
                </syllable>
                <syllable>
                  <syl>bla</syl>
                  <uneume name="clivis"/>
                  <uneume altsym="#symbolAB123"/>
                  <uneume altsym="#symbolCD456"/>
                </syllable>
                <!-- ... -->
              </layer>
            </staff>
          </section>
        </score>
      </mdiv>
    </body>
  </music>
</mei>

Does it at least make some sense?  It's not valid MEI as I gave the
<symbol> elements inside symbolDef only a @facs rather than a @ref.
(Unfortunately, there aren't any examples for <annot>, <handList>,
<creation> or <facsimile> on Google Code, so I'm using them as I
understand them.  But they're only meant as illustrative background
actors, anyway.)

>
> This doesn't sound right to me because you already said they have *neumes* that can't yet be interpreted.  But at the very least they can be called "neumes", right?  So what's wrong with calling them neumes by using the <neume> element?
>

Of course <uneume> would have to be used.  <uneume> has the @name
attribute that can be used to classify the symbol.  If there is a
symbol that doesn't fall in any of the categories that @name offers,
but still can be identified as a certain symbol, I would have used an
@altsym to point to the symbol, like shown above.  Of course one could
use <annot> or something to say "This is the neume of special type
pink-dog-with-green-tail", but I think @altsym is more accessible and
less cluttered.  For example, it's very straightforward to formulate a
search query "Find me all occurrences of pink-dog-with-green-tail".
Or if it should be found out that this is just a strange way of
writing a torculus, then @altsym can be replaced with the proper
@name.

But back to the original question:  It seems that using <symbol> or
@altsym for classifying unknown symbols (in any context) isn't
something that I should encourage in the guidelines.  At least that's
my interim conclusion of the discussion so far.

Thomas