Index talk:Emily Dickinson Poems (1890).djvu

Consistency
A few things I have noticed that proofreaders may need to agree on for this book.
 * 1.) What sort of formatting will the first word of a poem have. Is page 48 good? Is that too much formatting e.g. making copy and paste for end readers more difficult/time consuming. (compare page 150 etc.)
 * 2.) Should the poem number and title go in the header or the main body? (compare page 78 and page 48) - personally I think they should go in the header so that the page can be transcluded with just the poem (which is often preferable) without having to transclude only sections.

Any thoughts, any more issues? Suicidalhamster (talk) 12:29, 3 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Those are all pages I've worked on. Please note that 78 is an example of how the drop-cap breaks down with the old template (the gap between lines 1 and 2); see discussion at ws:s. 48 is one of the ones that I see as the best form (transcluded to The Brain, within its Groove, too). 150 is an example where I used a simple table to center things; others have some left padding to fake visual centering (true centering looks off because of the white-space on the right of most lines). Many pages are left aligned, which seems very wrong for short poems. To me, at least. John and I have talked about the titles going in the header; it has be so for tranclusions to work. It's late here; will follow up tomorrow. Cheers, Jack Merridew 15:28, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Page 103 is an interesting example; because the second line is the longest line, I had to add a white-space: nowrap; style — it wrapped poorly without it; I also had to use two nbsp-entities. The copy-paste you mention is odd; I'd like to find a work-around for it. Is this a big issue? Cheers, Jack Merridew 15:38, 3 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I think it is fine to put the title in the header and I prefer the formatting of page 150, it is simple and true to the text and seems much less complicated. But it depends on how much emphasis is being placed on the original look of each page. - Epousesquecido (talk) 19:56, 3 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry Jack my talk of copy and paste probably wasn't clear. I tried copy and pasting page 78 into word and found that the first letter, P, was given a line to itself while the rest of the word was on the next line. It seemed to me by adding the formatting we were making it harder for readers to transfer the text into other programs. However you point out that page 78 is the exception? I copy and pasted page 48 and it was better. As Epousesquecido says, it is an issue of how much emphasis is being placed on following the original formatting. Are we agreed about putting the title in the header? It seems all the arguments are in favour of doing so. Suicidalhamster (talk) 21:36, 3 November 2008 (UTC)


 * (reply to both)
 * Copy-paste of these have two issues; on 48, the drop-cap gets separated from the rest of the word and this is fixed by the new template that uses a span instead of a div (and it also fixes an inappropriate gap, which is what I was seeking to solve (usages). On 78, 48 and others, another thing I'm doing (with a different span) is to further indent the second line as is done in the scan. This technique requires that the third line be glued onto the end of the second, and in turn that causes the second and third lines to paste as one line elsewhere. Not good, but not a show stopper, either . This unintended artifact may be able to finessed and encapsulated in a template; this would also reduce the techno-clutter in the editbox. It's an experiment in progress. Titles in the header seems a given. No one seems to be objecting to the centering of these pieces, either.
 * A minor note; I've been including a space before some punctuation as shown in the scans; see the ' ;' and ' !' in page 48. I know this in not modern usage; it's a fidelity to original typography issue, too. Cheers, Jack Merridew 05:55, 4 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid that I'm not good enough with wiki mark-up to really offer any assistance with formatting or try experimenting, so I'm happy to leave it to you! Centering the poem is fairly easy to do so seems reasonable. Regarding the spaces before punctuation, I have no strong opinion so am happy either way. Suicidalhamster (talk) 15:13, 4 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I felt that no one disliked the centering, so I've done more of it; and see that you are, too. I have noticed an issue with poems that span two page; see page 86 & page 87 which are both trancluded to the left half of The Grass so little has to do — (and note that I find the trailing punctuation in the page name odd…). Anyway, in that example, the seam between the tables on the two pages has to be handled with care; the close of the first table has to be in the footer and the opening of the second table has be in that page's header. This makes them one table in pages they are transcluded to (as a pair, of course). There remains an issue with the seam between the poem tags of the two pages; it is currently causing the creation of two paragraph elements in the destination page and this results is unmatched spacing on the left of the transcluding page. I tried to tweak this, but it didn't work-out; will look again, tomorrow (see the undos in the histories of 86/87). Cheers, Jack Merridew 15:32, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

← I've tried something new; see big small-caps and how I used it on page 29. Basically, I've wrapped around an invocation of small-caps and dispensed with the drop-cap and indenting used above. It gets a bit of the feel of the original typography without any of the issues being discussed above; it reduces the clutter in the editbox and doesn't have the copy-paste issue. And I believe it will not have the odd line wrap issue. I'd like ideas on a name for a shortcut to big small-caps. I am continuing to use a table to center things and am placing the title in the header. Cheers, Jack Merridew 04:28, 5 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I like this. Its a good compromise between following the same layout as the page scans and keeping it simple. Suicidalhamster (talk) 13:11, 5 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It's currently used on 5 pages. I'm going to fiddle with the template to take control of the font size and weight; browsers default to various concepts of 'big'. I'll make it a bit bigger and bold. This will not change what's in the editbox. I expect to further deploy this scheme, as it seems issue-free and uncluttered. If the issues with the other schemes can be sorted, mebbe… Cheers, Jack Merridew 05:47, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
 * nb: This is used on a lot more than 5, now. I'm cutting most of the Dropinitial-span usages and the associated indenting span on the next line — I've left those mentioned above as examples, for the moment; they'll get cut last. I've also done the font-size and weight changes mentioned above; 130% and bold, at the moment.
 * If anyone has comments on my query at User talk:Sanbeg, I'd love to sort that concern, too; I see it as important to how we tranclude poems that span pages, which is about 20% of them. Cheers, Jack Merridew 13:41, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Per the above discussions, the above mentioned usages are now being cut. Stuff's in the histories. Cheers, Jack Merridew 09:04, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Naming

 * Soul, Wilt thou toss again?
 * is also at:

and there are a lot more like this. So, many are named per the first line and others have 'names' that may or may not be 'proper'; they may have been made up after the fact. No idea, really. But the dupes will need sorting and that's going to prove a lot more difficult than proofing these scans. A plan, anyone? Cheers, Jack Merridew 15:59, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Rouge et Noir (which comes from Page:Emily Dickinson Poems (1890).djvu/23)


 * All the titles are creations of 19c editors. Also from Wikipedia "[In early editions] the poems were extensively edited to match punctuation and capitalization to late 19th-century standards, with occasional rewordings to reduce Dickinson's obliquity" By the time there are any publications which strive to be faithful to how the poems were written we have to think of copyright issues.  It is hard to say how much concern to have over the use of 1955 and later publications without seeing the manuscripts themselves.  But if we could see the manuscripts we wouldn't need the scholarly editions :P I don't think we should overwrite the more scholarly collection of poems we already have with anything from this 19c collection, even if the latter is better supported with scans.  The 19c titles won't compete with the existing collection.  The question is how to link the separate collections together and handle the existing author page and indices.--Birgitte SB  04:24, 5 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I did overwrite a few that were different only in punctuation/capitalization; I'll track them down and display them 2-up, for now. I've seen cases where John did this, too, circa March. I don't believe we want distinct pages such as Rouge et Noir; if we end up collecting these pages into a presentation of the work, then that poem should get that title as part of the presentation layer of the work; the presentation of her works as a body should work from the first-line-as-title convention. If we're going to go with the punctuation/capitalization conventions present in the extant mainspace pages, we'll have to communicate this to editors working on these pages in the pagespace; the idea being to not edit those page to perfectly match the scan. Another approach (cringe) would be to maintain an awful lot of duplicate versions of the text and have a whole set of presentation layer pages to present variants for comparisons; this would entail a lot of navigation, too. Glad I've had a few glasses of champagne ;) Cheers, Jack Merridew 05:59, 5 November 2008 (UTC)


 * In poetry, differences in punctuation/capitalization should be considered significant. For right now maybe we should just set-up the presentation of this work within subpages (i.e.Poems (1890)/Rouge et Noir) and leave the existing collection set-up by first line/scholarly numbering as is (restoring where necessary) We can cross reference the versions in the notes section of the header (i.e. 1890 version.  If later on, someone wants to get more fancy with comparison versions it can all be done with transclusion and will not entail maintaining additional duplicate texts.  But we should probably just focus on a single presentation right now.--Birgitte SB  00:46, 6 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Hmmm… I see what you're saying and believe we need to slow down and sort this before too much of the existing collection gets messed-up. See my earlier talk at User:Jayvdb where we touched on the presentation layer issue last week. Initially, I was envisioning a work specific presentation layer as you discusss; he said there would not be a page(/pages?) collecting these numbered pages together and I'd seen that he'd transculded some of these into the existing collection and took that to mean that there would be one, unified, presentation of all of this.
 * As to the punc/caps variations, I meant that I thought that such differences that were introduced by later hands were insignificant; if we were to review every book of her poetry ever printed, I'm sure we'd find a great many minor variations. I know she did variants of many of the pieces herself, and those are certainly highly significant. Sorting these details is a process that still has some centuries to go. ;)
 * I'll review just where the existing collection intersects this 1890 work. I may make a list — and it might be large given the 1700+ that seem to exist! The numbering scheme is something from the wider community of Dickinson scholars? Something quite set in stone and an addition is a major event?
 * Going the work-specific presentation layer route w/subpages is a ton of work. It may, of course, be justifiable given the centuries timeframe. A hybrid scheme may emerge, which would take a lot of discussion. In order to do side-by-side comparisons via transclusions, we would need to refactor the existing collection to keep the body of the text in some transcludable page that is distinct from the page with the header and footers; currently, those pages can not be effectively transcluded — the header and footer would come along for the ride. We're going to need more worker-bees!
 * Cheers, Jack Merridew 05:39, 6 November 2008 (UTC)


 * A couple things. The work-specific presentation layer w/subpages is the route I like for books of poetry. The main issue is inserting the section labels as you proofread.  Once that is done and long as you set up the TOC properly with redlinks it should be pretty simple.  Click on redlink . . Insert template with section parameter matching title . . Preview . . If poem appears save or if nothing appears increase the number by one . . Preview then Save . . Return to TOC and click on next redlink. This would mostly work but on second thought once you get a hit you would need to keep checking the next number up until nothing appears before saving The headers should then be botable.  Even the cross-reference to the existing collectin in the notes should be botable using the first line.


 * In the case of posthumously published works, it is not reliable to prefer intial publications because they are already edited "by later hands." Without no input from the author possible, the editors are typically bold in making changes.  And it is usually a different generation that takes interest in fidelity to the author's vision.  And Emily Dickinson is probably an extreme example of bold editing by early editors.  The numbering scheme is from the first scholarly edition (1955) and is definately re-used in the Variorum Edition  I have not researched her enough to really say all scholarly writings refer to it but it appears widespread.


 * All we need to do to the existing collection to allow it to be transcludable is to add "onlyinclude" tags and can probaly be done by a bot that can recognise where the templates end/begin working from the "poem" tags. I don't think it will be a big issue (See Elegy I Comparative text).--Birgitte SB  22:17, 6 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm sensing unfamiliar territory! I'm going to go look into stuff you're referring to. There are an awful lot of more sophisticated transclusion techniques being used on this project; "onlyinclude", for example, I don't believe I've ever used. The more I look at the body of Dickinson's work, the larger the scope of the appropriate presentation seems to me; my immediate take-away from what you're saying is that the tools exist to do this without inordinate amounts of work and that I just need to browse about to find docs and examples. Thanks. Cheers, Jack Merridew 03:33, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Asking around is probably better than browsing around. We have done a lot of different proof of concepts over time, but they are scattered about and the wheres are mostly stored only in the memories of those who were here.  I likely remember anything we tried out particular to poetry, as I have always followed those discussions more closely.--Birgitte SB  18:27, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh, I'd love pointers to examples and doc pages; I just found ws:lst (and mw:Extension:Labeled Section Transclusion, in turn) after reading the comments over on Steve's page. It's another technique I've not used before, so I need to read up. Once I find an example that seems to work for all issues, I'll run with it, probably refining it as I go. Good point about other poetry; many of these issues are sure to have been run-up against before. Kinda busy this weekend, so this will drift 'til next week; I'll try and catch up on the reading. Cheers, Jack Merridew 04:27, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Spaces
Do we keep these spaces : like this ? and like this ! (that's what we find in the scan) or do we keep this? and this!- --Zyephyrus (talk) 09:51, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I've been adding the spaces per the scan; I said so, somewhere above and I don't believe anyone commented. I've been sticking to end-of-line/sentence punctuation; there seem to be thin-spaces in contractions, and I've not done those. I've also been adding nbsp-entities where the original had them. I'm also wondering if there should be spaces inside the quotation marks; " this ". I've not been doing that; seems too weird, and they're at most thin-spaces; might have line-wrap implications, too. Also, copy-pasting that would surprise folks. Just commenting; not in favor of it. Cheers, Jack Merridew 13:29, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * FWIW I have been following the exact procedure that Jack outlined above in a different book of poetry.--Birgitte SB  18:29, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you Birgitte, I will too.- --Zyephyrus (talk) 19:45, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Consensus; I'll continue with this approach. Cheers, Jack Merridew 04:10, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

TOC problems
The TOC pages have been marked as problematic, because "the links to the presentational pages are a mess". I think this refers to a bunch of redirects that I created, linking to the older pages we already had of these poems. Could the problem be explain in more detail, so that they can be fixed. We dont want pages marked as problematic unless there is a well defined problem - otherwise ppl will go looking for things to fix. (I think we need to separate proofreading stages from presentational stages; the latter are never provably finished). John Vandenberg (chat) 00:37, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * That was me. I've not looked in any detail at most of the text links in the TOC pages. And I was not thinking of redirects; rather the issue of replacing current text with tranclusions of these. There is discussion in the above sections about just what the presentation layer is supposed to be, and it is still evolving. I marked the TOC as problematic because the issue is still open. If folks want to consider the proofread and validation steps to merely refer to the rendered text and not the underlying structural issue, fine.


 * This is larger than this 1890 collection; there are two more collections closely related to this one, and there is the level that spans her entire body of work that is not definitively defined by these three collections. I see a presentation of this specific work as necessary; it will end up hooked-in to the extant collection which will, presumably, evolve to match the texts agreed upon by the scholarly community "out there". See Birgitte's comments above for the lead I'm following.


 * The proofing and validating of the basic texts is well-along, and the appropriate transclusion mechanisms are being sorted out. So, getting a consensus on the presentation layer of this work, and '91 & '96, and how they relate to the extant collection is needed soon. Cheers, Jack Merridew 04:48, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

A problem not solved
Hi, I haven't found how we can fix this, there are two pages that don't adapt, can you see where that comes from? I have blanked the page. ---Zyephyrus (talk) 23:21, 27 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I know; this is a problem. See ws:s and the links to discussion I gave at the bottom of that. Cheers, Jack Merridew 04:17, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Where are titles?
The Chariot's title doesn't match what's in the text. And it seems titles aren't in the body of the page but are added in by some wikivoodoo. How's it corrected?. Prosody (talk) 17:09, 1 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I just fixed the title, in the header, to add "THE". You can access the header by clicking the '+' in the toolbar above the editbox (or by disabling javascript). Having the titles in the header is appropriate. See the preface; the titles have been assigned, almost invariably, by the editors. These embedded titles are not authoritative and mostly should not be used in the presentation layer of this work. I think. Cheers, Jack Merridew 04:17, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

versions
I just subpaged one of these, see Talk:Poems (Dickinson)/There's a certain Slant of light. This was in response to a query on the text: whatever other versions exist, these poems are from this source. KIS ... CYGNIS INSIGNIS

2024 updates
Just noting for the record that most of the discussions above were had 15+ years ago and no longer reflect current practice on English Wikisource. We are currently bringing this work up to spec and that means we are making some changes that go against the decisions made in the above discussions: If I have time, I also hope to use a consistent template to center the poems (probably block center), and replace the poem extension with simple line breaks (which are more reliable and better reflect good web design) —Beleg Tâl (talk) 14:28, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Poems are being moved to subpages of Poems (Dickinson)
 * Drop initials are being restored
 * Titles of poems are being restored
 * Wikidata "work" items are being replaced with "edition" items
 * Some minor WS:MOS improvements like removing spacing around punctuation