Dear Giulia, I agree with Patrick's suggestions. However, it would be good to know more about the exact purpose of your encoding practice, i.e. what are you striving to achieve with it? As I see it, the TEI guidelines are pretty broad and in many cases it is possible to look at a textual aspect with different approaches, which accordingly would require one or the other encoding element. In other words, depending on your aim, you could use <samplingDecl> or the elements described at "12.1.5 Fragmentary Witnesses", as Patrick suggested - you could even use a combination of the two, or more elements etc. I wonder what others think about it, as I believe that this type of decision should be coordinated between all of us in order to become standard practice for South Asian texts. Best wishes, Camillo ________________________________ Dr Camillo A. Formigatti Information Analyst - FAMOUS Project Bodleian Libraries The Weston Library Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BG Email: camillo.formigatti@bodleian.ox.ac.uk<mailto:camillo.formigatti@bodleian.ox.ac.uk> Tel. (office): 01865 (2)77208 www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk<http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/> GROW YOUR MIND in Oxford University's Gardens, Libraries and Museums www.mindgrowing.org<http://www.mindgrowing.org/> From: Indic-texts <indic-texts-bounces@lists.tei-c.org> On Behalf Of giulia b Sent: 15 November 2020 09:39 To: indic-texts@lists.tei-c.org Subject: [Indic-texts] <samplingDecl> Dear all, I was wondering if anybody on the list has ever used the element <samplingDecl> and, if so, for which purposes. By reading the TEI guidelines (here<https://tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/ref-samplingDecl.html>), it seems that this should only be used when creating a corpus or a collection of texts, adding together pieces of a source or different sources. My doubt is: could it be used to record free-text information about the inclusion or the omission of portions of a text, manuscripts, or witnesses that are not editorial? For instance, can it be a good place to report that, for a given stretch of text, a given witness will not be collated (whether because the witness is incomplete or damaged)? Or should this kind of info rather be stated somewhere else (e.g. in <sourceDesc>, or <editorialDecl>)? Thanks in advance and best regards, Giulia Buriola