This has been a very interesting conversation. I really think that the  
most significant thing holding back the publication of digital  
editions: the tools for creating a digital critical edition, where  
they exist, simply aren't very accessible. If I want to produce a  
printed critical edition, I can put it together in Classical Text  
Editor (which is only moderately more complex than Microsoft Word) and  
have something that will look beautiful and work in the same way as  
readers of classical texts have expected since the nineteenth century.  
If I even want to do that same edition online, I basically have to do  
everything from scratch, and there seems to be no good way of  
accomplishing it if one is not a programmer.

Quite apart from the issue of textual variants, I want to be able to  
create an online edition that someone might actually want to read on  
an e-reading device of some sort: I've set to see anything that does  
this.

Andrew Dunning
PhD Student, Collaborative Program in Editing Medieval Texts
Centre for Medieval Studies
University of Toronto
individual.utoronto.ca/dunning

On 6 Apr 2012, at 10:55 p.m., Scott Carledge wrote:

> Professor Monella--
>
> You have done a superb job of stating the problems in your questions  
> and comments.  Although my fields are post-classical,
> your comments and questions are equally pertinent to NT and  
> Shakespearean variora.  My only mild disagreement is in the area of
> non-sense changing variants--I feel that these too are worth of  
> notice but I understand the practicality of omitting them.
>
> Scott Catledge
> Professor Emeritus
> history & languages
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: The Digital Classicist List [mailto:[log in to unmask] 
> ] On Behalf Of Paolo Monella
> Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2012 1:38 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [DIGITALCLASSICIST] Why are there no digital scholarly  
> editions of "classical" texts?
>
> One remarkable effect of digital modelling is that it makes all our  
> procedures, methodologic assumptions and implied ontologies (as  
> humanists), come to the surface and become explicit. Which, I think,  
> is good *for the Humanities* per se anyway.
>
> There are some things that I feel I have better understood due to  
> interesting replies to my initial question:
>
> 1. the kind of textual variance that we classical philologists are  
> actually interested in is exactly that provided by a print apparatus  
> criticus (only sense-changing variants, 'normalised' spelling etc.;  
> by the way: might this have to do with the fact that we all have  
> trained ourselves upon print apparati critici and this is the  
> modelling of textual variance we are accustomed to?);
>
> 2. The TEI module "Apparatus criticus" (and projects like Musisque  
> Deoque now) do not aim to give a digital model of the MSS textual  
> variance, but a digital model of the type of modern print book type  
> called "critical edition" (a digital model of how a print critical  
> edition represents textual variance). Will this be the model that  
> Perseus will follow? As compared to the "Homer multitext-model",  
> this comes short of our grand vision of digital editions based on  
> complete transcriptions of primary sources. But it may be better  
> than nothing, if this is what we classicists feel that we need.
>
>> how many dollars or euros would you spend on doing that?
>> Complicated question that would take real work to answer.
>> [...] That they are, so
>> far, few is not a condemnation of digital editing or of scholars who
>> refuse to participate:  it's a reflection of an intrinsic difficulty
>> that cannot be minimized.
>
> Right to the point! My way to avoid lessening the complexity of the  
> issue was initially to use paradox and provocation. The discussion  
> that is arising is being very useful in sharpening the focus on the  
> issues. Agreed: the answers will come from "real work", from  
> experimenting. But there is a step before that: who decides the the  
> research agenda? Our disciplinary community. When Perseus, TLG, CLT  
> will engage in textual variance, what aims and modelling will they  
> follow?
>
> Best,
> Paolo
> --
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