After I had to exit early from this morning's Stylesheets meeting I was eager to see how Syd's "Copia" output of the Guidelines turned out. (For those who missed it, Syd found a quick way to output the Guidelines in a way that would prevent suppression
of examples in other languages, and this seems mainly to affect the way the Guidelines Spec pages turn out (not the Guidelines chapter examples). I saw in the minutes that we're asked to review Syd's interesting output, named "Copia" (for more copious examples)
and report back to the Council list. So started exploring element spec pages a little this evening. Here's what I'm finding:
The bibl element is much improved by the Copia output: the examples are far more diverse, but not bewildering in number. I think it is fascinating to see non-English variety:
The byline element is similarly a lot more interesting now:
The gap element seems similarly improved, though there's a little problem here:
What I noticed right away was, the number of examples did not seem overwhelming, and the variety of languages evident before you had to click "Show All" reflects a good diversity with Asian languages rising to the fore. However(!) the duplicate
example jumps out--duplicates in English. Turns out the French exemplum is identical to the English here, and I"m not really sure why. I think I've seen that in other specs as well.
Meanwhile, the element p looks a bit more interesting now, and I think it improves on the current output:
How about ab? Completely boring: no change at all, and it's sadly evident that we don't have enough examples in the first place. (If that isn't a ticket yet, it should be!)
Okay-that's a start: a review of 5 out of 582 element specs (less than one percent...sigh). But so far I like the Copia version for what it illuminates about our range of exempla, both where it is diverse and where it is lacking.
Looking forward to hearing what others think!
Elisa
--
Elisa Beshero-Bondar, PhD
Program Chair of Digital Media, Arts, and Technology | Professor of Digital Humanities | Director of the Digital Humanities Lab at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College