Format/Notation Issues

[Aiwendil]

I think it would be best if we came up with a standard system of notation and a standard format for our emendations, which we will keep constant from section to section.

We currently have a sort of common law conventional system, but there are variations in it and it is not always precise.

Part of the problem is that with HTML, angular brackets cause a problem while without HTML, we can't do such things as underlining.

Jallanite's original conventions were:

[ ] Normalized, usually used for proper names indicating they are here in final form, not as in original text. Eg. "[Huor]" probably represents an original "Peleg", "[nor]thward", represents original "southward", and "[']" represents original """.
< > Material inserted from secondary source. If more than one secondary source occurs in the passage then a code appears after the opening angle-bracket, eg. "<QS77 ".
{ } Material to be deleted.
<u>Underline</u> Material inserted for grammatical reasons or as editorial bridge.

To which I added:
/ / Material altered in accordance with our principle 6c; mostly used for expansion of outlines. In this case, I will show the deletion of the original as well; for example: {Coming thither of Elwing} = /Elwing came thither/.

Of these, the only really unusable one now is the underlining (as you can see). We then have two options: either come up with a new notation for material inserted for grammatical reasons, or subsume that under another notation.

If we opt for a new notation, there are a number of choices but none that are especially nice or convenient. The vertical bar | | is a possibility. Backslashes \ \ might also work.

If we opt to merge notations, we might follow what has I think become the common practice in the last few parts of the FoG revisions, and use [ ] for both normalization and grammatical insertions.

As a matter of fact, the / / for outline expansion has also been replaced in common usage with [ ]. I'm not sure now whether we should go back to / / or simply use [ ] for normalization, grammatical insertions, and outline expansion.

If we do go back to / / however, we might as well standardize the deletion notation. What I mean is that in my original outline expansion notation, one would write such things as:

<TO {and the banner of Fingolfin}= /and above it flew the banner of Fingolfin/>.

This is very unwieldy and the equal sign is totally unnecessary. At the least, this can simplify to:

<TO {and the banner of Fingolfin} /and above it flew the banner of Fingolfin/>.

Of course, all of that is assuming that we want to keep / / at all.

Another format question, one which we did not really have to deal with in the Fall of Gondolin, is how to indicate the base text from which we are working. In the Fall of Gondolin, this was at all times the Tale in HoMe II, but in other sections, there will not be a single base text for almost the whole chapter.

One possible convention would be to indicate what base text one is using at the beginning of a section, and then only indicate changes (that is, not copy the whole text) using the angular brackets as necessary to indicate insertions from other sources. Then, if the base text changes for a significant length of text, indicate the switch.

What I mean is something that would look like this:

Base = LQ 2

XX-01:

XX-02:

XX-03:

Base = Q 30

XX-04:

Etc.


One final thought is that it might be worthwhile to generate a complete standard list of abbreviations. Some are obvious and others have been more or less fixed by convention - e.g. LQ is the Later Quenta Silmarillion, TO is the outline found in the final note on "Tuor" in Unfinished Tales, etc. But there may be cases where no obvious and immediately recognizable convention is apparent.

[Maédhros]

If we opt to merge notations, we might follow what has I think become the common practice in the last few parts of the FoG revisions, and use [ ] for both normalization and grammatical insertions.

As a matter of fact, the / / for outline expansion has also been replaced in common usage with [ ]. I'm not sure now whether we should go back to / / or simply use [ ] for normalization, grammatical insertions, and outline expansion.

I would rather keep it simple and use the [] for normalization, grammatical insertions and outline expansions.
Aiwendil, what is the difference between grammatical insertions and outline expansion?
To me this seems:

/ / Material altered in accordance with our principle 6c; mostly used for expansion of outlines. In this case, I will show the deletion of the original as well; for example: {Coming thither of Elwing} = /Elwing came thither/.

like a grammatical insertion, which changed the order of the sentence.

One possible convention would be to indicate what base text one is using at the beginning of a section, and then only indicate changes (that is, not copy the whole text) using the angular brackets as necessary to indicate insertions from other sources. Then, if the base text changes for a significant length of text, indicate the switch.

Agree 100% with that. That really happened a lot with the Ruin of Doriath section.

One final thought is that it might be worthwhile to generate a complete standard list of abbreviations. Some are obvious and others have been more or less fixed by convention - e.g. LQ is the Later Quenta Silmarillion, TO is the outline found in the final note on "Tuor" in Unfinished Tales, etc. But there may be cases where no obvious and immediately recognizable convention is apparent.

Yes, we should definitely do that. What I had in mind is:

BoLT 1 The Book of Lost Tales 1 (HoME 1).
FG "The Fall of Gondolin" from The Book of Lost Tales 2 (HoME 2).
TE "The Tale of Eärendel" from The Book of Lost Tales 2 (HoME 2).
Q30 "The Quenta", written in 1930, from The Shaping of Middle-earth (HoME 4). Quotations are from §16 and from §17 in the Q2 version including later emendations as per the notes.
AB 2 "The Later Annals of Beleriand", written about 1936?, from The Lost Road (HoME 5). Unknown to Christopher Tolkien when he produced QS77.
TO "Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin", written about 1951 from Unfinished Tales
Elessar The Elessar from "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn" in UT.
TY "The Tale of Years", (1951-52), from The War of the Jewels (HoME 11)
PG The Parentage of Gil-galad, a long note by Christopher Tolkien appended to SF, containing material by his father on this matter.
SF "The Shibboleth of Fëanor", Feburary 1968 or later, in the chapter of the same name from "The Peoples of Middle-earth" (HoME 12).
QS77 Quenta Silmarillion as published in The Silmarillion edited by Christopher Tolkien in 1977.
QE "Quendi and Eldar" from "The War of the Jewels" (HoME 11)
NA "Narn I Chîn Húrin", from "Unfinished Tales".
ET "The Etymologies", from "The Lost Road and Other Writtings". (HoME 5).
QS "Quenta Silmarillion", from "The Lost Road and Other Writtings". (HoME 5).
WH "Wanderings of Húrin", from "The War of the Jewels" (HoME 11).
TN "Tale of the Nauglafring", from "The Book of Lost Tales II" (HoME 2).

There are lots that are missing, but I think that we can work with that for the time being.

[Findegil]

I am rather for keeping a difference for

[ ] Normalized, usually used for proper names indicating they are here in final form, not as in original text. Eg. "[Huor]" probably represents an original "Peleg", "[nor]thward", represents original "southward", and "[']" represents original """.

<u>Underline</u> Material inserted for grammatical reasons or as editorial bridge.

and

/ / Material altered in accordance with our principle 6c; mostly used for expansion of outlines. In this case, I will show the deletion of the original as well; for example: {Coming thither of Elwing} = /Elwing came thither/.

And I like Aiwendils suggestion of \ \ instead of <u>Underline</u>.
What I think we will indicate mostly by this are editorial bridges.
What for me is still missing is a possibility to indicate a commentary of the editor in the text. The only one allowed by that convention (beside the convention it self, which is a kind of categorisation of the change made) is the "code ... after the opening angle-bracket, eg. "<QS77 "" Since we do clearly have not for every source a code and I would find it very unhandy to have to look back to a listing of codes to find out of which text this came, I would at least suggest a sign as break between source info or commentary and the inserted text e.g.:
<QS77; from chapter XY | whatever text is to be inserted>.

I agree to the list of abbreviations, but I think a complete List would in the end be very unhandy. For that I think we should ever allow for the full info (see above).

One possible convention would be to indicate what base text one is using at the beginning of a section, and then only indicate changes (that is, not copy the whole text) using the angular brackets as necessary to indicate insertions from other sources. Then, if the base text changes for a significant length of text, indicate the switch.

Agreed.
What is missing is the convention to number the changes. I found that very unhandy in the last discussions. If the changes were once numbered, it was not so easy to find a number for a new change found to be needed. At first I found the system of numbered §§ more convenient until I worked out a different plot for the DoF and tried to apply Maédhros § numbers to my text. But that was very special case.

Respectfully
Findegil

[Mister Underhill]

Just to make things even more confusing, I discovered that one can also use vB Code [ u ] and [ /u ] tags for underlining, like this.

[Aiwendil]

I would rather keep it simple and use the [] for normalization, grammatical insertions and outline expansions.
Aiwendil, what is the difference between grammatical insertions and outline expansion?

I took "grammatical insertions " to mean, for example, the addition of words like "and" and "but", as well as the addition of commas and such, when we combine text from different sources. It is not used to make a direct change to the base text, but rather used when another change (almost always an angular bracket insertion) is being made, in order to keep things grammatically correct.

Outline expansion means taking a base text that is in outline form and rewriting it in grammatically correct form.

I'm not sure I agree with collapsing all three - normalization, grammatical insertions, and outline expansion - to a single notation. On the other hand, I suppose I could see using the same notation for grammatical insertions and normalization. But on the whole, I lean more toward Findegil's suggestion to keep them separate.

However, I do think it might prove confusing to use slashes for one thing and backslashes for another.

BoLT 1 The Book of Lost Tales 1 (HoME 1).

I think it would be better to simply use Roman numerals for the HoMe volumes - so I means the Book of Lost Tales part I, V means The Lost Road, etc.

Findegil wrote:

I agree to the list of abbreviations, but I think a complete List would in the end be very unhandy.

I would prefer to stick to abbreviations rather than insert comments on where to find the material. Personally, I would kind of like to have a master list of abbreviations. But you do have a point when you say that such could be unhandy. If not a master list, then, perhaps whenever someone makes reference to a text for which there is not yet a common abbreviation, that person should define one.

What is missing is the convention to number the changes. I found that very unhandy in the last discussions. If the changes were once numbered, it was not so easy to find a number for a new change found to be needed. At first I found the system of numbered §§ more convenient until I worked out a different plot for the DoF and tried to apply Maédhros § numbers to my text. But that was very special case.

You are right. I found it very confusing that the original numbering of the FG changes was replaced when the individual section threads were opened.

I suppose the main thing in the future, then, is simply to stick with whatever numbering system we use initially.

I think the original system used for FG is sufficient for the future. That is, each change is designated with something of the form XX-YY-ZZ where XX is the chapter/project code (so FG = Fall of Gondolin, RD = Ruin of Doriath, etc.), YY indicates the section (and this division is arbitrary and can be defined simply as the chunk of text a person is making changes to - so in FG we have "TG" for "Tuor in Gondolin", "A" for the attack, "C" for the closing portions), and ZZ is the number of the change.

If we want to add a new change in between two existing changes, we can assign a decimal value to the number code, so that the changes remain sequential. Thus if I propose a change between XX-YY-05 and XX-YY-06 I could call it XX-YY-05.5. If someone proposes another change after 05 but before 05.5 it could be called XX-YY-05.3 (or XX-YY-05.4, etc.). There is a continuous infinity of real numbers between any two numbers, so we shouldn't run out of them.

The only possible problem would be if someone proposes not just another change, but the use of a whole new base text. In such a case, there might not be an obvious sequential relation between the changes proposed for that text and the changes previously proposed using the other text. One way out of this would simply be to use a different YY code for each such proposal. So, for example, if someone has used a certain base text for a section, and numbered the changes XX-Y-01, XX-Y-02, etc., and I want to present a proposal for using an entirely different base text, I could number my changes XX-Y2-01, XX-Y2-02, etc.

This sounds a bit complicated, but I don't think it really is. Most of it has already been done in the Fall of Gondolin.

[Aiwendil]

Well I've just discovered that apparently we once again have the ability to underline things. It's simply a U within square brackets.

I don't see any reason now not to go back to the convention where underlined text means an insertion for grammatical reasons.

Edit: Somehow I missed Mr. Underhill's post above saying exactly the same thing.

[Findegil]

About XX-YY-ZZ: I hope I will be able to follow that system when I am inside the projected text from the begining. It is good to have it explained again in full. I think what should be avioded is the mixing of YY as we did in FG. Bye, bye Balrogs, Mechanical Monsters and the sections all got their own YY with completly unconected numbers.

To signify the HoME volumes by a roman number is simple but very abstract. In the end I agree to the idea of a master list. But I think anybody how prepares a bigger part of the text for discussion should as help for the readers not familiar with the project includ at least a link to the list, or beter a list of the used abbreviations.

Since underlining is possible we have landed by the original system. If nobody has any objection against it, I we should use the vertical stroke "|" to separate the source information from the text, especially since the roman numerlas would other wise be very confusing.

Respectfully
Findegil

[Aiwendil]

Findegil wrote:

About XX-YY-ZZ: I hope I will be able to follow that system when I am inside the projected text from the begining. It is good to have it explained again in full. I think what should be avioded is the mixing of YY as we did in FG. Bye, bye Balrogs, Mechanical Monsters and the sections all got their own YY with completly unconected numbers.

As I understand it, the reason for the B! and D! Balrog and Dragon changes was that the validity of these changes rested on a point that was not yet quite settled. What I mean is that if (as in fact happened) we decided to revert to the old mechanical dragon idea, it was easier to simply eliminate all the D! changes than to hunt through all the changes to the text for anything involving dragons. So I think there is something to be said for that system.

On the other hand, you're right that it would be preferrable not to have some changes numbered out of sequence with the changes around them.

I suppose in the end I lean toward your view.

Since underlining is possible we have landed by the original system. If nobody has any objection against it, I we should use the vertical stroke "|" to separate the source information from the text, especially since the roman numerlas would other wise be very confusing.

Well, the source information is already supposed to be bold. Or is it? Looking back at the list of notations I don't see that listed. But it was the convention used in some of FoG, anyway, to write the source like this:

. . . . . . . <Q30 . . . . . . . . . > . . . . . . . . .

I think that makes the source easily enough distinguished from the surrounding text.

Actually, I don't imagine that the HoMe volume will be the relevant code in just about any case. Wouldn't it instead be the specific text within that volume that is cited? So we write Q30 instead of IV, FG instead of II.

[Findegil]

Oh, yes I missed the bold marking. That is okay then. We will go with that system.

Respectfully
Findegil

P.S.: I think we schould make this thread sticky to let it be easily to find.

P.P.S: Please don't expect me to be very fast in posting the base text promissed for DF. Their is a lot of work to find and identify the changes I made already. in addition I have a lot of other things to do in my free time this weekend. They are in fact Tolkien related but will sadly not be helpful for the project.

[Maédhros]

I'm not sure I agree with collapsing all three - normalization, grammatical insertions, and outline expansion - to a single notation. On the other hand, I suppose I could see using the same notation for grammatical insertions and normalization. But on the whole, I lean more toward Findegil's suggestion to keep them separate.

I know that separating all them has an advantage, but I still tend at least to use the [] for grammatical insertions and normalization. We have used this approach already in dealing with the Fall of Gondolin and it served us right. The more divisions that we use, the harder it will be (for me at least and to people new with the project) to recognize the notations.

I'm ok with the other things, but in all I think that too many notations will disrupt more than help us organize the text.

[Aiwendil]

I'm still hesitant to merge the notations for normalization and for grammatical insertions. The main reason is that they differ not just superficially, but also in their fundamental inspiration. Normalization has to do with updating old and obselete words and names. Grammatical insertions, on the other hand, are fabrications made by us for textual cohesion. So one is canonical, the other textual.

If the only problem is the number of different notations, I would now (despite saying the opposite a few posts back) be more inclined to merge outline expansion with grammatical insertions, leaving normalization separate.

[Findegil]

The more divisions that we use, the harder it will be (for me at least and to people new with the project) to recognize the notations.

I don't think so. The only think that is really needed is to make clear what text will be deleted. The rest is only additional information helpfull for the advanced user and no matter of thought for the newbe. It is a pity that we cannot use crossed out texted. Or can we?

Respectfully
Findegil

[Maédhros]

If the only problem is the number of different notations, I would now (despite saying the opposite a few posts back) be more inclined to merge outline expansion with grammatical insertions, leaving normalization separate.

If we worked before with less notations and we got the job done, why suddenly the need to increase significantly the number of new notations?
For how long have we used those notations in dealing with the Fall of Gondolin?

I don't think so. The only think that is really needed is to make clear what text will be deleted. The rest is only additional information helpfull for the advanced user and no matter of thought for the newbe.

I disagree, if those notations were in actually needed for our work, how come they were ignored in the Fog?

[Aiwendil]

Maedhros wrote:

I disagree, if those notations were in actually needed for our work, how come they were ignored in the Fog?

Primarily because underlining was impossible, I think.

Certainly we don't need to retain to the grammatical insertions - normalization distinction - that is, failure to make that distinction would not make the project impossible. But in my opinion distinguishing the two makes it easier to understand the proposed changes (particularly the motivation for the proposed changes).

Also, it forces the editor to have a clear motivation in the first place.

[Maédhros]

Also, it forces the editor to have a clear motivation in the first place.

I'm still not sure that they are absolutely needed but if you think that it could help clarify our project, then I will cede that point.

[Findegil]

So that means we are settled with this system:

[ ] Normalized, usually used for proper names indicating they are here in final form, not as in original text. Eg. "[Huor]" probably represents an original "Peleg", "[nor]thward", represents original "southward", and "[']" represents original """.
< > Material inserted from secondary source. If more than one secondary source occurs in the passage then a code appears after the opening angle-bracket, eg. "<QS77 ".
{ } Material to be deleted.
Underline Material inserted for grammatical reasons or as editorial bridge.
/ / Material altered in accordance with our principle 6c; mostly used for expansion of outlines. In this case, I will show the deletion of the original as well; for example: {Coming thither of Elwing}/Elwing came thither/.

Each change is designated with something of the form XX-YY-ZZ where XX is the chapter/project code (so FG = Fall of Gondolin, RD = Ruin of Doriath, etc.), YY indicates the section (and this division is arbitrary and can be defined simply as the chunk of text a person is making changes to - so in FG we have "TG" for "Tuor in Gondolin", "A" for the attack, "C" for the closing portions), and ZZ is the number of the change.

If we want to add a new change in between two existing changes, we can assign a decimal value to the number code, so that the changes remain sequential. Thus if I propose a change between XX-YY-05 and XX-YY-06 I could call it XX-YY-05.5. If someone proposes another change after 05 but before 05.5 it could be called XX-YY-05.3 (or XX-YY-05.4, etc.). There is a continuous infinity of real numbers between any two numbers, so we shouldn't run out of them.

Base = LQ 2
XX-01:XX-02:XX-03:Base = Q 30
XX-04:Etc.

What we are going to do is the master-list of abbreviations.
I think we should look into the HoME volumes to see what Christopher Tolkien created. I think we had to ad only a small number after taking his abbreviations up.

Respectfully
Findegil

[Aiwendil]

/ / Material altered in accordance with our principle 6c; mostly used for expansion of outlines. In this case, I will show the deletion of the original as well; for example: {Coming thither of Elwing}/Elwing came thither/.

I had suggested that, as a compromise between Maedhros's desire for simplicity and my desire for distinction, we keep normalization separate but merge outline expansion with grammatical insertions. Maedhros, would this be better in your view than keeping all three distinct? If so, I think we should stick with underlining and get rid of / /.

[Maédhros]

I had suggested that, as a compromise between Maedhros's desire for simplicity and my desire for distinction, we keep normalization separate but merge outline expansion with grammatical insertions. Maedhros, would this be better in your view than keeping all three distinct? If so, I think we should stick with underlining and get rid of / /.

I can certainly live with that.

[Findegil]

Searching again for this Thread, I decisded that I would bring up in front again.

Aiwendil, could you be so kind and make this sticky? I think its content can help any one new to the project to speed up his understanding of our texts.

Respectfully
Findegil

P.S.: If the project would start again from scrap, I would now rather use underlining for text that is delated and {...} for text inserted for gramatical or metrical reason. The simple reason is that inserts are most often very short, while deletion can be long parts of text, which then in our system are dificult to recognise.
But to change that long standing system now would only bring more confusion.

[Aiwendil]

Good idea. And I agree about underlining and brackets - at this point, it would cause far too much confusion.