Consider making @hand be global

[joeytakeda]

In the February 2025 Community Call, the issue of the global availability of @hand was brought up. @hand's limited availability means that denoting shifting @hands requires various workarounds (like using handShift, unnecessary wrapping elements, or the use of @rend). Council has considered streamlining @hand in the past—see #2550 and conversation in https://github.com/TEIC/TEI/pull/2665—but ended up adding @hand to individual elements.

[RobertoRDT]

I find this comment by Syd Bauman interesting: #2550 (comment)

I guess you have discussed the matter before proceeding with adding @hand to <emph>, but if this attribute "points to a handNote element describing the hand considered responsible for the content of the element concerned" (att.written) how do I know if the referred-to scribal hand is responsible for the content of an element, or its highlighting in some way, or both? Isn't there an overlap with @resp?

[cthomasdta]

[…] how do I know if the referred-to scribal hand is responsible for the content of an element, or its highlighting in some way, or both?

It seems clear enough to me, also re: Syds comment you linked to, that this distinction is clear from the elements @hand is being applied to:

1. Dear diary, what a <add place="inline" hand="#scribe2">great</add> day it is!
2. Dear diary, what a <emph rend="underline" hand="#scribe2">great</emph> day it is!

In 1. scribe no. 2 added the word "great" which wasn't there initially.
In 2. scribe no. 2 'only' emphasised the word "great" which was already part of the original text.

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Isn't there an overlap with @resp?

I don't think so, by convention I would use @resp for today's editor of the text, while @hand is being used for the historical scribes.

I hope that helps to clarify!

[torstenroeder]

It seems to me that this is linked to the discussion about @place. Shouldn't @hand just be available where @place is?

[cthomasdta]

It seems to me that this is linked to the discussion about @place. Shouldn't @hand just be available where @place is?

I don't think this would suffice, e.g. the above-mentioned emph does not allow @place (and understandably so!), so it would not allow @hand (which it should!) in your suggested approach.

[torstenroeder]

Possibly the members of att.transcriptional need to be harmonized in some way, especially after the recent changes when @place has been generalized and is now allowed to appear on more elements than before. (However it was also discussed that it seemed to make not much sense on some class members.)

[RobertoRDT]

Hi Christian, thank you for your reply.

It seems clear enough to me, also re: Syds comment you linked to, that this distinction is clear from the elements @hand is being applied to:

1. `Dear diary, what a <add place="inline" hand="#scribe2">great</add> day it is!`

2. `Dear diary, what a <emph rend="underline" hand="#scribe2">great</emph> day it is!`

In 1. scribe no. 2 added the word "great" which wasn't there initially. In 2. scribe no. 2 'only' emphasised the word "great" which was already part of the original text.

I agree that is perfectly clear if you more or less implicitly tie @hand use to @rend, what I mean is that, since the current Guidelines text has been defined before extending @hand use to <emph> and now possibly many other elements, and since it explicitly mentions "content" in relation to scribal hands, it should be clarified and more examples (such as the one you propose) should be added. I still find the implicit connection to @rend weak on a semantic point of view.

Isn't there an overlap with @resp?

I don't think so, by convention I would use @resp for today's editor of the text, while @hand is being used for the historical scribes.

What if @resp points to an author revising its own work? That's not at all unlikely in genetic criticism, actually I am using it to that purpose, and you can have authorial changes in medieval manuscripts as well.

[cthomasdta]

Hi Roberto, thanks for your questions!

Re: your first point:

[…]
I agree that is perfectly clear if you more or less implicitly tie @hand use to @rend, […]
I still find the implicit connection to @rend weak on a semantic point of view.

Imo the @hand use is not merely/not in the first place tied to the attribute, @rend, but to the element, in this case <emph>, which is what attributes should refer to I think. The rendering @rend of the emphasis <emph> is an additional information given to expand the expressiveness of the observation that there is an emphasis in the first place, so the @rend attribute adds information to the <emph> element it is attached to – and the @hand attribute does the same: it adds information to the <emph> element it is attached to (and is not referring to or tied to @rend).

what I mean is that, since the current Guidelines text has been defined before extending @hand use to <emph> and now possibly many other elements, and since it explicitly mentions "content" in relation to scribal hands, it should be clarified and more examples (such as the one you propose) should be added.

I agree, that should be made clearer. This was altered not so long ago here and unfortunately I did not realise at the time that the fixation on "the textual content of an element" / "der Inhalt eines Elements" is not applicable e.g. for <hi> or <emph>, and also not for <del> and possibly other elements.

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Re: the second point, "Isn't there an overlap with @resp?":

What if @resp points to an author revising its own work? That's not at all unlikely in genetic criticism, […]

Of course, this is very often the case, but like I said, for an author of a ms. revising his/her own work I would use @hand, not @resp. While this disctinction where to apply @hand vs. @resp is not (and maybe should not be) cemented in the general TEI Guidelines[*], it should be made clear in the project's guidelines = the prose description accompanying the edition, e.g. in the ODD and/or the definition of the format/TEI subset being used.

[*] But to me it is clear enough:

• "@hand points to a handNote element describing the hand considered responsible for the content of the element concerned."
• "@resp (responsible party) indicates the agency responsible for the intervention or interpretation, for example an editor or transcriber. "

I would argue that "the hand" intervening manifests itself physically in the ms., with visible traces left by some writing device, while "the agency" correcting or normalising, supplying or commenting something would not scribble this on the ms. itself. Therefore I think the examples given for said agency, "an editor or transcriber", is telling in this direction (NB correcting or normalising could also be done by a machine and the @resp value would point to some software).