Reconciliation and Interchange

Collating the page as text in the Frankenstein Variorum

Editing the Text, Editing the Page Conference
University of Venice, 6 October 2023

Link to these slides: https://bit.ly/fv-recon

https://frankensteinvariorum.org

Elisa Beshero-Bondar

@ebeshero | Mastodon: epyllia@indieweb.social | Bluesky: @epyllia

Variorum - Change over time

Most immediate context: Darwin Online (ed. Barbara Bordalejo), except...

Frankenstein Variorum only compares five witnesses
Frankenstein Variorum incorporates MS witnesses
Frankenstein Variorum integrates earlier digital editions made by others

James Rieger, ed., first new edition of 1818 in 141

years : inline collation of "Thomas" w/ 1818,

1831 variants in endnotes

Legend:

Stuart Curran and Jack Lynch: PA Electronic Edition (PAEE) , collation of 1818 and 1831: HTML

Nora Crook crit. ed of 1818, variants of "Thomas", 1823, and 1831 in endnotes (P&C MWS collected works)

Romantic Circles TEI conversion of PAEE ; separates the texts of 1818 and 1831; collation via Juxta

1974

~mid-1990s

1996

Charles Robinson, The Frankenstein Notebooks (Garland): print facsimile of 1816 ms drafts

2007

Shelley-Godwin Archive publishes diplomatic edition of 1816 ms drafts

print edition

digital edition

Legend:

2013

2017

Critical and Diplomatic Editions Leading to the Frankenstein Variorum Project

Frankenstein Variorum Project :

assembly/proof-correcting of PAEE files; OCR/proof-correcting 1823; "bridge" TEI edition of S-GA notebook files; automated collation; incorporating "Thomas" copy text

PA Electronic Edition (mid 1990s): 1818 vs 1831

started from base HTML 1.0 files
up-converted to clean, simple XML
- ”on its way” to TEI (structural elements in text)
- prepared for machine-assisted collation (via collateX): including element tags
- deep hierarchy of novel ”flattened” to milestones: <div type="volume"/>, <p/>, etc.
corrected against photofacsimiles of 1818 and 1831 print publications

Prepared from OCR new XML of 1823 edition

prepared by William Godwin, the first edition bearing the name ”Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley” on the title page
XML syntax matches that of 1818 and 1831 editions

Working with MS versions

S-GA diplomatic edition of the 1816 Notebooks,
- encoded surface-by-surface, line-by-line
- required resequencing to collate
Thomas copy marginalia
- prepared new XML from 1818 edition, with <add>, <del>, <note> elements

Shelley-Godwin Archive: sample page surface:

Shelley-Godwin Archive

sample surface encoding from S-GA

<surface xmlns:mith="http://mith.umd.edu/sc/ns1#" lrx="3847" lry="5342" 
partOf="#ox-frankenstein_volume_i" ulx="0" uly="0" 
mith:folio="21r" mith:shelfmark="MS. Abinger c. 56" 
xml:base="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/
umd-mith/sga/master/data/tei/ox/ox-ms_abinger_c56/ox-ms_abinger_c56-0045.xml" 
xml:id="ox-ms_abinger_c56-0045">
  <graphic url="http://shelleygodwinarchive.org/images/ox/ms_abinger_c56/ms_abinger_c56-0045.jp2"/>
  <zone rend="bordered" type="pagination"><line>75</line></zone>
  <zone type="library"><line>21</line></zone>
<!-- lines of text elided here -->
<line>to form. His limbs were in proportion</line>
<line>and I had selected his features <del rend="strikethrough">h</del> as</line>
<line><mod>
        <del rend="strikethrough">handsome</del>
        <del rend="unmarked">.</del>
        <anchor xml:id="c56-0045.01"/>
      </mod>
      <mod>
        <del rend="strikethrough">Handsome</del>
        <add hand="#pbs" place="superlinear">Beautiful</add>
      </mod>; Great God! His</line>

<!-- at the end of the surface encoding, encoding material in a left-margin zone:  --->

<zone corresp="#c56-0045.01" type="left_margin">
    <line><add><mod>
          <del rend="strikethrough">handsome</del>
          <add hand="#pbs" place="superlinear">beautiful.</add>
        </mod></add></line>
  </zone>
<!-- other marginal insertions encoded -->
</surface>

S-GA: resequenced / compressed for collation

<surface lrx="3847" lry="5342" 
partOf="#ox-frankenstein_volume_i" 
ulx="0" uly="0" folio="21r" shelfmark="MS. Abinger c. 56" base="ox-ms_abinger_c56/ox-ms_abinger_c56-0045.xml" 
id="ox-ms_abinger_c56-0045" sID="ox-ms_abinger_c56-0045"/>
      <graphic url="http://shelleygodwinarchive.org/images/ox/ms_abinger_c56/ms_abinger_c56-0045.jp2"/>
      <zone type="main" sID="c56-0045__main"/> 

<lb n="c56-0045__main__17"/> 
         <del rend="strikethrough" sID="c56-0045__main__d2e9811"/>But how<del eID="c56-0045__main__d2e9811"/> How can I describe
      my <lb n="c56-0045__main__18"/> emotion at this catastrophe; or how 

<w ana="start"/>deli<lb n="c56-0045__main__19"/>neate<w ana="end"/> 

the wretch whom with such <lb n="c56-0045__main__20"/> infinite pains and care I had endeavoured <lb n="c56-0045__main__21"/> to form. His limbs were in proportion <lb n="c56-0045__main__22"/> and I had selected his features <del rend="strikethrough" sID="c56-0045__main__d2e9830"/>h<del eID="c56-0045__main__d2e9830"/> as <lb n="c56-0045__main__23"/> 
         <mod sID="c56-0045__main__d2e9835"/>
            <del rend="strikethrough" sID="c56-0045__main__d2e9837"/>handsome<del eID="c56-0045__main__d2e9837"/>
            <mdel>.</mdel>
            <anchor xml:id="c56-0045.01"/>
            <zone corresp="#c56-0045.01" type="left_margin" sID="c56-0045__left_margin"/> 
               <lb n="c56-0045__left_margin__1"/> 
               <add sID="c56-0045__left_margin__d2e9849"/>
                  <mod sID="c56-0045__left_margin__d2e9851"/>
                     <del rend="strikethrough" sID="c56-0045__left_margin__d2e9853"/>handsome<del eID="c56-0045__left_margin__d2e9853"/>
                     <add hand="#pbs" place="superlinear" sID="c56-0045__left_margin__d2e9856"/>beautiful.<add eID="c56-0045__left_margin__d2e9856"/>
                  <mod eID="c56-0045__left_margin__d2e9851"/>
               <add eID="c56-0045__left_margin__d2e9849"/>
            <zone eID="c56-0045__left_margin"/>
         <mod eID="c56-0045__main__d2e9835"/>
         <mod sID="c56-0045__main__d2e9863"/>
            <del rend="strikethrough" sID="c56-0045__main__d2e9865"/>Handsome<del eID="c56-0045__main__d2e9865"/>
            <add hand="#pbs" place="superlinear" sID="c56-0045__main__d2e9868"/>Beautiful<add eID="c56-0045__main__d2e9868"/>
         <mod eID="c56-0045__main__d2e9863"/>; Great God! His <lb n="c56-0045__main__24"/>

added word boundary markup to indicate whole words spanning lines
resequenced margin zone content: (followed S-GA's pointers to represent semantic reading order for collation)

Developed new TEI edition: Thomas Copy

Added insertions, deletions, + margin-notes to 1818 edition
checked against and respond to/update Nora Crook and James Reiger editions

to share a nonlinear, divergent edition history
to encourage exploration from one edition to the others

FV Edition Objectives

Summary of edition revisions

1816 notebooks to 1818: uneven (gaps in notebooks)
1823 edition: Mary Shelley's father makes small edits, usually not substantive
Thomas "fork" divergence:
- copy with margin notes was left in Italy before 1823, 1823
- edits mark desired passages to delete and significant additions MWS imagined making "if there were to be a new edition"
- left behind in Italy in 1823 when MWS moved back to England.
1831 revisions:
- nothing directly retained from Thomas marginalia
- alters character relationships in the Frankenstein family, added chapter and several lengthened passages

FV has something to prove with TEI

We want to prove that we can collate digital editions that were encoded very differently
And that TEI can express this comparison!
Any digital edition of Frankenstein can be compared to track significant changes over time
- TEI XML editions marked with <surface> and <zone> with a separate page by page encoding can be compared with editions encoded structurally with
- As long as we can identify where they mark comparable structural shifts

FV and our students

Introduce textual scholarship to students, fans of Frankenstein

as well as text scholars, 19c specialists:

Read each edition of text while seeing how it was changing over time.
Involve students in the reading, collation correction, interface development
Recruit next generation of text scholars?
Moving to a new stage of user experience testing (classes, etc): https://frankensteinvariorum.org

Preparing marked-up texts for collation

Markup of text structure compared across Variorum:
- Volume (print editions only), letter, chapter
- Paragraph, poetry line-groups and lines
- Notes

Markup of manuscript events included in Variorum comparison: deletion, insertion, gap

Normalizing algorithm:
- Decide what marks are equivalent)
- Ignore but preserve other markup in collation process, also abbreviations, capitalization.

”Chunking” algorithm: (limit possibility of major misalignments)
- Locate ”seams” where all editions align
- Divide into ”chunks” at the seams
- Prep each edition as 33 collation ”chunks”, C01 - C33
- Edition files of the same chunk are collated together

Including markup in the comparison

Manuscript (from Shelley-Godwin Archive):

<lb n="c56-0045__main__2"/>It was on a dreary night of November 
<lb n="c56-0045__main__3"/>that I beheld <del rend="strikethrough" 
xml:id="c56-0045__main__d5e9572">
       <add hand="#pbs" place="superlinear" xml:id="c56-0045__main__d5e9574">the frame on
         whic</add></del> my man comple<del>at</del>
<add place="intralinear" xml:id="c56-0045__main__d5e9582">te</add>
<add xml:id="c56-0045__main__d5e9585">ed</add>

1818 (from PA Electronic edition)

<p xml:id="novel1_letter4_chapter4_div4_div4_p1">I<hi>T</hi> was on a dreary 
night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils.</p>

What matters for meaningful comparison?
- Text nodes
- <del> and <p> markup
What doesn't matter?
- <lb/> elements, attribute nodes
- <hi>? *In real life we include the <hi> elements because sometimes they are meaningful for emphasis.

Normalized strings to compare

MS (from Shelley-Godwin Archive):

It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld 
&lt;del&gt;the frame on whic&lt;/del&gt; my man 
comple&lt;del&gt;at&lt;/del&gt;teed

1818 (from PA Electronic edition)

&lt;p&gt;IT was on a dreary 
night of November, that I beheld
the accomplishment of my toils.&lt;/p&gt;

Tokenize them!

MS (from Shelley-Godwin Archive):

["It", "was", "on", "a", "dreary", 
"night", "of". "November", "that", 
"I", "beheld" 
"&lt;del&gt;the frame on whic&lt;/del&gt;",
"my", "man", 
"comple", "&lt;del&gt;at&lt;/del&gt;", "teed"]

1818 (from PA Electronic edition)

["&lt;p&gt;", "IT", "was", "on", "a", "dreary", 
"night", "of", "November,", "that", "I", "beheld",
"the", "accomplishment", "of", "my", "toils.", "&lt;/p&gt;"]

Project decision: Treat a deletion as a complete and indivisible event:

a ”long token”. This helps to align other witnesses around it.

Nodes on the other side of collation

Real output from the project

(Embedded markup is a little more complicated than our previous example)

<app>
	<rdgGrp n="['that', 'i', 'beheld']">
		<rdg wit="f1818">that I beheld</rdg>
		<rdg wit="f1823">that I beheld</rdg>
		<rdg wit="fThomas">that I beheld</rdg>
		<rdg wit="f1831">that I beheld</rdg>
		<rdg wit="fMS">&lt;lb n="c56-0045__main__3"/&gt;that I beheld</rdg>
	</rdgGrp>
</app>
<app>
	<rdgGrp n="['&lt;del&gt; the frame on whic&lt;/del&gt;',
               'my', 'man', 'comple', 
               '', '&lt;mdel&gt;at&lt;/mdel&gt;', 'te', 'ed', 
               ',', '.', '&lt;del&gt;and&lt;/del&gt;']">
		<rdg wit="fMS">&lt;del rend="strikethrough" 
          xml:id="c56-0045__main__d5e9572"&gt;
			&lt;sga-add hand="#pbs" place="superlinear" 
          sID="c56-0045__main__d5e9574"/&gt;the
	      frame on whic &lt;sga-add eID="c56-0045__main__d5e9574"/&gt; &lt;/del&gt; my man
		  comple &lt;mod sID="c56-0045__main__d5e9578"/&gt; 
          &lt;mdel&gt;at&lt;/mdel&gt;
		  &lt;sga-add place="intralinear" sID="c56-0045__main__d5e9582"/&gt;te
          &lt;sga-add eID="c56-0045__main__d5e9582"/&gt;
          &lt;sga-add sID="c56-0045__main__d5e9585"/&gt;ed
		  &lt;sga-add eID="c56-0045__main__d5e9585"/&gt;
          &lt;mod eID="c56-0045__main__d5e9578"/&gt;
          &lt;sga-add hand="#pbs" place="intralinear"sID="c56-0045__main__d5e9588"/&gt;, 
          &lt;sga-add eID="c56-0045__main__d5e9588"/&gt;.
		  &lt;del rend="strikethrough"
		  xml:id="c56-0045__main__d5e9591"&gt;And&lt;/del&gt;</rdg>
	</rdgGrp>
	<rdgGrp n="['the', 'accomplishment', 'of', 'my', 'toils.']">
		<rdg wit="f1818">the accomplishment of my toils.</rdg>
		<rdg wit="f1823">the accomplishment of my toils.</rdg>
		<rdg wit="fThomas">the accomplishment of my toils.</rdg>
		<rdg wit="f1831">the accomplishment of my toils.</rdg>
	</rdgGrp>
</app>

From collation data to spine

“Spine” = data model (dynamic nerve plexus?) holding the variorum together
- standoff use of TEI critical apparatus
  - coordinates data on variance, including normalized tokens and maximum edit-distance values
- points to specific locations in the variorum edition files

How do the five editions “stack up” by collation chunk?

Legend

1818

Thm

1823

1831

gaps, alignments, relative string-length for each ”chunk”

Interface design

Astro + React framework, serves TEI with CETEIcean plugin
design for mobile, tablets, and laptops

We love to talk about the functional standoff critical apparatus "spine" of our edition!

But TEI may not love our reconstructed edition files. . .

It's fully TEI conformant
Expresses only the moments of variation
Points like a switchboard into the edition files
Represents the editions as
"stringified XML"
Openly shares the normalized interpretation as the basis of comparison

🤨

Consequences of our collation methods

Marking variant passages in the edition files
- Was the result of an XSLT pipeline
- "raised" <seg> elements around variant passages
- Variant passages crossed hierarchies
  - Example: a variant that changes the location of a paragraph break
  - Standoff Spine just includes the flattened <p> tag
  - But the edition files contain <seg> elements that wrap around <p> elements
Our ODD customization does not reconcile with TEI-All

What we did to the <seg> element

 <elementSpec ident="seg" mode="change">
          <desc>represents any segmentation of text below the <soCalled>chunk</soCalled> level. 
            In our customization, the <gi>seg</gi> element may appear at any level of the document
          under the <gi>body</gi> element, and may surround <gi>p</gi> elements or appear inside them.
          Because the <gi>seg</gi> element is generated to represent a passage of variation,
          and variation <q>chunks</q> can be larger or smaller than paragraphs, 
            we have restructured the TEI to permit a more flexible encoding.</desc>     
          <content>
           <alternate minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"> 
             <macroRef key="macro.paraContent"/>
            <classRef key="model.pLike" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
             <classRef key="model.headLike" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
             <elementRef key="del-INNER" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
             <elementRef key="add-INNER" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
             <elementRef key="mdel" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
             <elementRef key="shi" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
             <elementRef key="delSpan" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
             <elementRef key="zone" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
           </alternate>
          </content>
        </elementSpec>

What we did to the <body> element

<elementSpec ident="body" mode="replace">
          <desc versionDate="2023-08-28" xml:lang="en">contains the whole body of a single unitary
            text, excluding any front or back matter. We are modifying the body element to permit it
            to contain <gi>seg</gi> and text nodes for representing our re-sequenced version of the
            Shelley-Godwin Archive files.</desc>
          <classes>
            <memberOf key="att.global"/>
            <memberOf key="att.declaring"/>
          </classes>
          <content>
                <alternate minOccurs="0"
                  maxOccurs="unbounded">
                  <classRef key="model.global"
                    minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
                  <elementRef key="listApp" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1"/>
                  <classRef key="model.pLike" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
                  <classRef key="model.divTop" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
                  <classRef key="model.divGenLike" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
                  <elementRef key="seg" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
                  <elementRef key="lg" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
                  <elementRef key="add" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
                  <elementRef key="mod" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
                  <elementRef key="shi" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
                  <elementRef key="w" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
                  <textNode/>
                </alternate>
              <sequence minOccurs="0"
                maxOccurs="unbounded">
                <classRef key="model.divBottom"/>
                <classRef key="model.global"
                  minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
              </sequence>
          </content>
        </elementSpec>

(Yes, we should really do this with <div> instead and we'll remodel.)

Why `<seg>`?

Should we propose a new element?

Or new capacity for <seg>?

For editions that track variants using standoff XML:
- to mark inline a moment of variation in a single edition file (facilitates display of "hotspots")
- Not the same as marking an inline critical apparatus
  - not the same as a nested app/rdg structure in a file harmonizing all the witnesses
  - appropriate for single edition XML files representing each version of a work separately

Should we propose a new element?

Or new capacity for <seg>?

More broadly, to complement standoff by enriching the inline:

informative elements like this can be mapped via XSLT from standoff files. XSLT can generate at the same time
- the pointer URLs for the standoff file
- the destination elements to which they point (no need for XPointer calculations, etc)
Inline element to complement standoff
- binds data to the standoff file (like setting fasteners)
- facilitates interface development (immediate connections from standoff data to data files--eases designing a framework from source TEI files).
- enriches the expression of data and theory of the text at all levels of the project

Reconciliation and Interchange

Collating the page as text in the Frankenstein Variorum

Variorum - Change over time

Critical and Diplomatic Editions Leading to the Frankenstein Variorum Project

PA Electronic Edition (mid 1990s): 1818 vs 1831

Working with MS versions

Shelley-Godwin Archive: sample page surface:

Shelley-Godwin Archive

S-GA: resequenced / compressed for collation

Developed new TEI edition: Thomas Copy

FV Edition Objectives

Summary of edition revisions

FV has something to prove with TEI

FV and our students

Preparing marked-up texts for collation

Including markup in the comparison

Normalized strings to compare

Tokenize them!

Nodes on the other side of collation

Real output from the project

From collation data to spine

How do the five editions “stack up” by collation chunk?

Interface design

Consequences of our collation methods

What we did to the <seg> element

What we did to the <body> element

Why <seg>?

Should we propose a new element?

Or new capacity for <seg>?

Should we propose a new element?

Or new capacity for <seg>?

Why `<seg>`?