[XeTeX] (Xe)LaTeX output in a non-(Xe)LaTeX scholarly community

[Dominik Wujastyk]

Muller's edition: http://www.wilbourhall.org/index.html#veda


On 23 October 2010 18:55, Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk at gmail.com> wrote:

> That was Prof. Max Muller (professor of Philology) and his critical edition
> of the Rg Veda.  :-)
>
>
> On 23 October 2010 18:41, Gareth Hughes <garzohugo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On the matter of declining skills in typesetting I'm reminded of an
>> Oxford apocryphon of a printer who was preparing a Sanskrit grammar. The
>> printer contacted the author, an esteemed professor, with a crucial
>> error in the Sanskrit text. The professor first felt angry at being
>> questioned on matters of Sanskrit by a printer, but verified the
>> reported the error in his own copy. Returning to the printer he asked
>> how he'd managed to spot the error. The printer replied that, after
>> setting pages and pages in a script he could not read, he had learnt
>> that one of them never follows one of them! Ah... attention to detail;
>> they don't make them like that anymore!
>>
>> Gareth.
>>
>> John Was wrote:
>> > Well I'm still in the Press once a week at least (for choir practice!)
>> > so I shall make sure these comments reach the right ears.  They
>> > correspond, unfortunately to my own impression.  Leofranc
>> > Holford-Strevens works heroically on critical editions but he is the
>> > sole in-house editor left and can't possibly handle them all.  I think
>> > he is pretty well full-time on large projects with extensive commentary
>> > (and still finds time to publish and lecture extensively on an
>> > astonishing range of topics).
>> >
>> > Getting back to TeX-related matters, the hyphenation patterns available
>> > in XeTeX (even to 'plain' users like myself) are an enormous help, even
>> > if I disagree with the English at frequent points (the Latin rarely lets
>> > me down, aside from a few rogues - is hucusque one? - which I guess are
>> > analagous to Knuth's 'manuscript' in refusing to comply with the
>> > algorithms).  No one bothers to read people like Priscian on what should
>> > be done with Greek and Latin, and no one at OUP involved in passing
>> > proofs would have the faintest idea about this subject.  Neither, alas,
>> > do authors - with the Dictionary of Medieval Latin (which I have just
>> > relinquished with completion of Fascicule XIII in the middle of letter
>> > 'R') it was left entirely to me, and I fear that laxity in this matter
>> > will pervade future fascicules as it did in some of those that preceded
>> > my involvement.  When I asked the compilers  to keep a look-out for any
>> > bad hyphenations that I might have missed in perusing and correcting the
>> > proofs, they asked me to explain the rules!
>> >
>> > John
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > ----- Original Message ----- From: <jherrman at allegheny.edu>
>> > To: <xetex at tug.org>
>> > Sent: 23 October 2010 15:05
>> > Subject: Re: [XeTeX] (Xe)LaTeX output in a non-(Xe)LaTeX scholarly
>> > community
>> >
>> >
>> >> Yes, as you would guess, the copy-editor marked up my files by hand
>> >> and sent me the hard copy.
>> >>
>> >> Recent OUP critical editions in Greek prose could use a lot more
>> >> copy-editing; I would assert that their production standards in this
>> >> area have fallen drastically in the last decade. We have new editions
>> >> of the Greek orators Demosthenes and Lysias in the Oxford Classical
>> >> Text series, all filled with rampant flaws in hyphenation and line
>> >> numbering in the apparatus. Reviews have also identified numerous
>> >> slips of a more substantial nature, that seem to suggest very little
>> >> copy-editing is happening on these in house. It seems that OUP has
>> >> adopted new modes of production for these critical editions that
>> >> create these problems, and authors (and copy-editors?) don't regularly
>> >> take the time to fix it all. I know in the case of my book the
>> >> copy-editor, who was otherwise very attentive, didn't seem to have
>> >> looked at the Greek at all.
>> >>
>> >> The other major series of critical texts in Greek (and Latin), on the
>> >> other hand, the Bibliotheca Teubneriana, has been shuffled from one
>> >> publisher to another in the last decade. It's now in the hands of De
>> >> Gruyter, who seems devoted to its revitalization. They're requiring
>> >> all editors to submit camera-ready-copy, and recommending that they
>> >> use Critical Edition Typesetter (<http://www.karas.ch/cet/>). I have
>> >> the impression they only really care about the appearance of the CRC,
>> >> though, and wouldn't really care if authors prefer other typesetting
>> >> systems.
>> >>
>> >> Jud Herrman
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On 2010-10-23, John Was
>> >> <john.was at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> >>> OUP will normally be amenable if saving money is in prospect!  I
>> >>> think the
>> >>> barrier here has always been the copy-editing process (now more
>> >>> vulnerable
>> >>> since house style is not seen as so important and indeed there is no
>> >>> longer
>> >>> any copy-editing department at OUP).  A critical edition will normally
>> >>> require a rather small amount of copy-editing, though there is still
>> the
>> >>> introduction and commentary to consider - but if a TeX-savvy author is
>> >>> willing to implement those copy-editing changes and suggestions s/he
>> >>> agrees
>> >>> with, there is no real difficulty.  The copy-editor would then
>> >>> presumably
>> >>> work by pen(cil) on a draft PDF printout in the traditional way (or by
>> >>> annotating the PDF electronically, which can be tedious).
>> >>>
>> >>> Or of course one can simply trust the author not to make any mistakes
>> at
>> >>> all, and forgo copy-editing.  Even twenty years ago this was
>> >>> mentioned as a
>> >>> possibility at OUP but no one dared to do it in my time there.
>> >>>
>> >>> But I hope this doesn't become too much of a trend or I'll have to
>> >>> look for
>> >>> something else to do!  In the meantime, I must dust down my old brown
>> >>> OCT of
>> >>> Hyperides...
>> >>>
>> >>> John
>>
>>
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