poetry markup

The motivation for emitting Curl markup instead of HTML markup from a Smalltalk web server was to have the benefits of Curl as poetry markup.

Curl macros and text procedures mean that poetry layout can be simply

  {poem title="...",
     {stanza ...
     {stanza ...

or

   {canto
      {line 1, ...
      {line 2, ...

or whatever proves suitable: {verse,  {book, {couplet ...  The marked content remains eminently readable and automated layout is a breeze.

The real strength of Curl for poetry markup lies in presenting/suppressing/selecting annotations, variants and variant translations inline - which of course also can be done with CSS and classes using visibility and scripted with JavaScript - with both the ease and elegance of Curl.

詩マークアップを生成します。

  شعر نشانه گذاری.

 توصيف قصائد.

시를 마크업.

詩歌標記。
詩標記。
標記詩。

  
thơ đánh dấu.
bài thơ đánh dấu.
đánh dấu bài thơ.

شاعری مارکاپ.
شاعری مارکاپ.
مارک اپ نظمیں.

şiir biçimlendirme.
biçimlendirme şiirler.

मार्कअप कविता.
मार्कअप कविताएँ.

诗歌标记。
诗标记。
标记诗。

поэзия разметки.
Стихотворение разметки.
разметки стихи.

poezja znaczników.
wiersz znaczników.
wiersze znaczników.

a marcado la poesía española
para el marcado poemas Españoles

di markup poesia italiana
di markup poesie italiane

le marcáil filíocht agus amhráin.
le marcáil dánta agus véarsa.

для разметки поэзии и песни.
для разметки стихи и стихи.

Gedichte und Lieder Markup

techniques pour baliser la poésie et des chansons ...
... au balisage des poèmes et des vers.         

Hubris and nested markup for text in the humanities

My attention is usually directed to alternative markup for the humanities, specifically poems and their alternative translations as presented on the internet in a web browser.

Consider a simple case: a poem of two stanzas or verses of 6 lines each.  The first four lines of verse ONE satisfy some criterion A and the last 4 lines of verse TWO satisfy some criterion C. Lines 5 through 8 satisfy some criterion B.  Proceed to markup using HTML, LML, XML or my preferred Curl.

One solution in markup such as Curl which has no "closing tag", e.g.,

{tag
  content
}

rather than

<tag>
  content
</tag>

might be this:

{A
line 1
line 2
line 3
line 4
|{B line 5
line 6
} || end of A (a comment starts with dbl-bars )

{C
line 7
line 8 |} || end of DOUBLE_BRACED  B  (a comment only)
line 9
line 10
line 11
line 12
} || end of C comment

Note that such a double-brace solution as |{  and |} is not available in Curl.  In mathematics, such bracketing would be nonsense.  But two stanzas are not two equations.

In zoology, the existence of the species Lupus canis (wolf) and Lupus latrans (coyote) yields to the fact that wolves and coyotes hybridize in nature. In the northeastern United States the question is what should journalists call these hybrid animals.  In the case of common tree species which readily hybridize, the challenge for botany is far greater.  Classification always cedes ground to the facts of genetics.

But in the simple case of a mere translation of a difficult two stanza poem from German to English, markup falters.  This would not be the case with simple paint programs, where one "markup range" or "marginal note" translates readily into over-lapping graphical figures.  Some are less effective than others: think of the reach of A above as red, C as blue and B as some shade of violet.  Over-lapping transparent coloured rectangles, if you like.  But the "markup" on the page risks being unreadable.  Text has been abandoned to graphics.  Font triumphs over content, if you will.

The awkward XML solution is

<A>
<B>
</A>
<C>
</B>
</C>

which you may detect above as the overlapping Bold-Italic-Bold of a sentence above.  It is awkward because you must now parse with specialized software to extract that of A which satisfied B.

Consider this alternative:

<A>
<B>
</B>
</A>

<C>
<B>
</B>
</C>

What is now lost is the continuity of B.

Visiting any major poetry or philosophy web site will reveal that very little is available to compare translations - because the problems of markup are daunting.  Arguably philosophy students are more penalized by attempts to markup premises and suppressed premises relevant to an argument when the text is itself a challenge.  One example would be the limited efforts of philosopher Jonathon Bennett to make Early Modern philosophy texts more accessible to students.

For an example of from poetry, take the poem by Werfel and the "translation" by Robert Lowell.
The solution which I find frightful is that of "lines" in poetry and "sentences" in philosophy.  Here is the two stanza poem as lines:

{line num=1,stnza=1,feature="A", line 1 here} 
{line num=2,stnza=1,feature="A", line 2 here}
{line num=3,stnza=1,feature="A", line 3 here}
{line num=4,stnza=1,feature="A", line 4 here}
{line num=5,stnza=1,feature="B", line 5 here}
{line num=6,stnza=1,feature="B", line 6 here}
{br}{br}
{line num=7,stnza=2,feature="B", line 7 here}

{line num=8,stnza=2,feature="B", line 8 here}
{line num=9,stnza=2,feature="A", line 9 here}
{line num=10,stnza=2,feature="A", line 10 here}
{line num=11,stnza=2,feature="A", line 11 here}
{line num=12,stnza=2,feature="A", line 12 here}

for now I have lost the elegant markup

{stanza
}

{stanza
}

in which each stanza had its lines - with or without line markup.

Curl markup for philosophy: text annotations and translations

Over at aule-browser.blogspot.com I have a post with a link to a philosphy text example.

What I hoped to make clear is that at each of the web page views for which there are links at each page (starting at phil.aule-browser.com/truth.htm) is that it is the identical text artifact that is being loaded into each page - a simple "include" macro is present: {include "truth_text.scurl"} which file is just text with MIT Curl markup such as {mbold some-technical-term} which is my bold variant on the usual Curl {bold some-text} text format.

When I don't want to see my bold emphasis in a text, I load that same file but into a top-level Curl page in which the definition of {mbold } is to just return the bracketed text as-is, i.e., with no emphasis added.

I am preparing another page with variant text from key portions of "Logical Investigations II" with translation comparisons.  I'll add a post when that is available at aule-browser.com

I have two pending notes at philpapers.org on this approach to philosophy eText/eBook as an alternative to HTML and PDF.

Semantic Web group at developers.curl.com

There is now a Semantic Web group at developers.curl.com

The Curl programming language is a web content language with macros which can load code packages dynamically so there are lots of good things for keeping semantic markup orthogonal to presentation markup. Curl has multiple inheritance so we may have a mix-in class for those containers which carry semantic tags. Strings in Curl are treated as Visual objects for purposes of presentation but they are often held in wrappers such as {text some string content} and {paragraph some-variety-of-objects}. All that is required is that curly braces are balanced - note the lack of closing tags.

Now to see if we lean towards RDF or Topic Maps or can get our arms around both ... it's time to triple-down on all bets!