[Next Project] The Heart of Midlothian, by Walter Scott

[David]

I may live to regret this, but I think I'd like to take a stab at producing one of Scott's Waverley novels, The Heart of Midlothian:

• Wikipedia: The Heart of Midlothian
• PG transcript: The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete
• GB scans, vol 1: The heart of Midlothian, v1
• GB scans, vol 2: The heart of Midlothian, v2

There are some challenges. (1) There are different ways of numbering the volumes in the Waverley series, but given that we've got Ivanhoe numbered as vol. 10, I think that makes Heart of Midlothian volume 7.

(2) Title? Do we retain the hyphen in Mid-Lothian (like Penguin and Everyman editions)? Or "modernize" to Midlothian (with Oxford World Classics and most, I reckon, "modern" reprints)? Having lived for many years in Midlothian (!), the hyphenated version looks odd to my eye, but that's no real consideration. :) It appears ~30x in the body of the novel, too.

(3) The scans I've linked "match" the PG transcription, except the chapter numbering differs (see the Wikipedia link for various chapter numbering schemes in different editions). I would be inclined to number like the SCANS, as that's inclusive of ch. 1 as the "introductory" chapter, so the "se split" chapter numbers would match the filename.

There are about 4 items of front-matter, and around 20 appendices ("Notes" to the text). There are endnotes/footnotes throughout. This is ~240K words, all-in, which isn't too bad.

There are also oodles of paintings of scenes and characters from the book, so when the time comes for a cover, there should be plenty to choose from.

Any advice or steers on these or other gotcha's appreciated. Thanks!

David / Fife, UK

[Alex Cabal]

OK, sure. You can modernize 'Midlothian'. As far as chapters numberings
go, you can pick whichever one seems most appropriate. As usual, the
latest possible editions are probably what we want to follow. But don't
pick based on how easy `se split-chapters` is. You can always simply
remove a section from the single-file text to get the numbering right
anyway.

On 3/8/24 7:12 AM, David wrote:
> I may live to regret this, but I think I'd like to take a stab at

> producing one of Scott's Waverley novels, /The Heart of Midlothian/:
>
> * Wikipedia: The Heart of Midlothian
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heart_of_Midlothian>
> * PG transcript: The Heart of Mid-Lothian
> <https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6944>, Complete
> * GB scans, vol 1: The heart of Midlothian, v1
> <https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Waverley_Novels_The_heart_of_Midloth/HusoVq20mOgC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PR1&printsec=frontcover>
> * GB scans, vol 2: The heart of Midlothian, v2
> <https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Waverley_Novels_The_heart_of_Midloth/yTe06r-X5CEC?hl=en&gbpv=1>

>
> There are some challenges. (1) There are different ways of numbering the

> volumes in the Waverley series, but given that we've got /Ivanhoe/
> numbered as vol. 10 <https://standardebooks.org/collections/waverley>, I
> think that makes /Heart of Midlothian/ volume 7.
>
> (2) Title? Do we retain the hyphen in /Mid-Lothian/ (like Penguin and
> Everyman editions)? Or "modernize" to /Midlothian/ (with Oxford World

> Classics and most, I reckon, "modern" reprints)? Having lived for many
> years in Midlothian (!), the hyphenated version looks odd to my eye, but
> that's no real consideration. :) It appears ~30x in the body of the
> novel, too.
>
> (3) The scans I've linked "match" the PG transcription, except the
> chapter numbering differs (see the Wikipedia link for various chapter
> numbering schemes in different editions). I would be inclined to number
> like the SCANS, as that's inclusive of ch. 1 as the "introductory"
> chapter, so the "se split" chapter numbers would match the filename.
>
> There are about 4 items of front-matter, and around 20 appendices
> ("Notes" to the text). There are endnotes/footnotes throughout. This is
> ~240K words, all-in, which isn't too bad.
>
> There are also oodles of paintings of scenes and characters from the
> book, so when the time comes for a cover, there should be plenty to
> choose from.
>
> Any advice or steers on these or other gotcha's appreciated. Thanks!
>
> David / Fife, UK
>

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[David]

Thanks, Alex. A couple questions arising as I get the "skeleton" in place - 

(1) Of the four pieces of introductory material (one called a "postscript"(!)), The first and the last are by the volume's editor, Andrew Lang, the other two are by Scott himself. Do we retain all four (my working assumption)? or jettison the two by Lang?

(2) The 20-odd "Notes" to the book are by Scott, and of varying length, some just a paragraph. The question here is structure: they could either (a) go into a single file with sections for each note, or (b) each into their own file like "chapters". And does it matter what this file (or these files) are called? would `notes.xhtml` do? Or , if into separate files, then `note-a.xhtml` (which follows how they have always been named), or would `note-1.xhtml` be preferred?

(There are additional notes by Lang which will be converted to endnotes.)

Thanks for guidance on this — I haven't encountered this kind of structure before, and finding analogies has proved a challenge!

D.

[Alex Cabal]

On 3/9/24 10:39 AM, David wrote:
> Thanks, Alex. A couple questions arising as I get the "skeleton" in place -
>
> (1) Of the four pieces of introductory material (one called a
> "postscript"(!)), The first and the last are by the volume's editor,
> Andrew Lang, the other two are by Scott himself. Do we retain all four
> (my working assumption)? or jettison the two by Lang?

If they're interesting you can keep them. If not then cut them. Things
that can be looked up on Wikipedia or are general biographies or
overviews are not interesting.

> (2) The 20-odd "Notes" to the book are by Scott, and of varying length,
> some just a paragraph. The question here is structure: they could either
> (a) go into a single file with sections for each note, or (b) each into
> their own file like "chapters". And does it matter what this file (or
> these files) are called? would `notes.xhtml` do? Or , if into separate
> files, then `note-a.xhtml` (which follows how they have always been
> named), or would `note-1.xhtml` be preferred?

I would create one file called "notes", with that title, and put them in
subsections titled "Note A", "Note B", etc.

[David]

Helpful, Alex, thanks.

The main editorial introduction is a substantial piece of literary criticism on the novel itself—antecedents, characterization, style, etc.—and worth including. The "postscript" adds a small point of historical detail which doesn't appear (to my eye) to enhance the reader's experience much.

I think I'm good to go now! Repo is here: https://github.com/dajare/walter-scott_the-heart-of-midlothian

D.

[David]

I think I better ask about this before going too much further. 

As noted earlier in the thread, we have a `notes.xhtml` file with a (large) set of Scott's notes to the novel. There are also a generous number of regular footnotes which are going into `endnotes.xhtml`. Some of those foot/endnotes refer the reader to the various sections of the "Notes". Here's an example:

The question is: do we hyperlink "the affair of Porteous" in the foot/endnote to that (sub)section in `notes.xhtml`? If so, (a) are there any  semantics on the links? and (b) is a backlink provided in `notes.xhtml` back to the endnote (presumably)?

This isn't the dreaded endnote to an endnote, but it's still a puzzle to me!

Thanks - D.

[Vince]

Yes, it’s a link like any other link, i.e. an "<a href" with the link going to the proper paragraph in the Author's Notes. See SEMoS 5.1.2 if you have to put id’s on things that don’t already have them. No, there’s no backlink, because it’s not an endnote (it’s in an endnote, but the link is just a link); a link is one-way only. We have these all over the corpus, but Gibbon has dozens of them; see endnote 18, 37, etc.

On Mar 18, 2024, at 12:54 PM, David <djre...@gmail.com> wrote:

I think I better ask about this before going too much further. 

As noted earlier in the thread, we have a `notes.xhtml` file with a (large) set of Scott's notes to the novel. There are also a generous number of regular footnotes which are going into `endnotes.xhtml`. Some of those foot/endnotes refer the reader to the various sections of the "Notes". Here's an example:

[David]

Thanks, Vince - I searched the corpus but my regex (or the GitHub code search implementation) didn't turn up any useful hits. I should have guessed Gibbon would have them. ;-)

All the id's are already in place, so no problems there. Grateful for the pointer!

D.

On Monday 18 March 2024 at 18:18:19 UTC Vince wrote:

Yes, it’s a link like any other link, i.e. an "<a href" with the link going to the proper paragraph in the Author's Notes. See SEMoS 5.1.2 if you have to put id’s on things that don’t already have them. No, there’s no backlink, because it’s not an endnote (it’s in an endnote, but the link is just a link); a link is one-way only. We have these all over the corpus, but Gibbon has dozens of them; see endnote 18, 37, etc.

[David]

Progress has been a bit slow, as the endnotes situation in this PG transcription was dire, but...

...I have a question about italics-to-quotes, addressed in SEMoS § 8.2.10 - and in some cases this guidance is sufficient (e.g., a change from `<i>fey</i>` to `“fey”` as this is found in MW). But what about a case like this:

    Plumdamas joined the other two gentlemen in drinking their <i>meridian</i> (a bumper-dram of brandy), as they passed the well-known low-browed shop in the Lawnmarket...

"Meridian" is used later in this meaning, as well. This meaning for "meridian" is not found in MW, but it is an "English" word. My hunch is that it should, then, in the first occurrence be treated like `<i>tuff</i>` in the SEMoS example (marked up with non-semantic `i`), and its second occurrence just plain text (no markup).

There are other cases like this, too. I'm checking this one to see if I'm on the right track, both with how I'm treating cases like "fey", as well as "meridian". Thanks for any help with this!

D.

[Alex Cabal]

I think in this case it's used in the sense of the Latin word for "noon"
and not in an English sense, so you can use <i xml:lang="la">.

Fey is just English, it is not a loan word. So if it was italicized
perhaps it was for emphasis?

On 3/27/24 7:25 AM, David wrote:
> Progress has been a bit slow, as the endnotes situation in this PG
> transcription was dire, but...
>
> ...I have a question about italics-to-quotes, addressed in SEMoS §

> 8.2.10 <https://standardebooks.org/manual/1.7.4/single-page#8.2.10> -

> and in some cases this guidance is sufficient (e.g., a change from
> `<i>fey</i>` to `“fey”` as this is found in MW). But what about a case
> like this:
>
>     Plumdamas joined the other two gentlemen in drinking their
> <i>meridian</i> (a bumper-dram of brandy), as they passed the well-known
> low-browed shop in the Lawnmarket...
>
> "Meridian" is used later in this meaning, as well. This meaning for
> "meridian" is not found in MW, but it is an "English" word. My hunch is
> that it should, then, in the first occurrence be treated like
> `<i>tuff</i>` in the SEMoS example (marked up with non-semantic `i`),
> and its second occurrence just plain text (no markup).
>
> There are other cases like this, too. I'm checking this one to see if
> I'm on the right track, both with how I'm treating cases like "fey", as
> well as "meridian". Thanks for any help with this!
>
> D.
>

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[David]

Thanks, Alex - a couple responses:

I think in this case it's used in the sense of the Latin word for "noon"
and not in an English sense, so you can use <i xml:lang="la">.

I guess so, although "meridian" isn't quite a Latin word, either. It's a distinctively Scots (and obsolete) use of the English word - this is the OED entry at this point (which you might have seen already), certainly associated with "noon":

(Our sentence is even one of the illustrative quotes!)

"Fey", and others like it, are (so Scott claims) being used in distinctively Scots ways; some are further defined in endnotes. It's being italicized as being different from normal English usage. It's usually clear where Scott is using italics for emphasis; these are more like the SEMoS 8.2.10 examples of technical (or regional in this case) terminology.

Does that help?

D.

Fey is just English, it is not a loan word. So if it was italicized
perhaps it was for emphasis?

On 3/27/24 7:25 AM, David wrote:
> Progress has been a bit slow, as the endnotes situation in this PG
> transcription was dire, but...
>
> ...I have a question about italics-to-quotes, addressed in SEMoS §
> 8.2.10 <https://standardebooks.org/manual/1.7.4/single-page#8.2.10> -
> and in some cases this guidance is sufficient (e.g., a change from
> `<i>fey</i>` to `“fey”` as this is found in MW). But what about a case
> like this:
>
>     Plumdamas joined the other two gentlemen in drinking their
> <i>meridian</i> (a bumper-dram of brandy), as they passed the well-known
> low-browed shop in the Lawnmarket...
>
> "Meridian" is used later in this meaning, as well. This meaning for
> "meridian" is not found in MW, but it is an "English" word. My hunch is
> that it should, then, in the first occurrence be treated like
> `<i>tuff</i>` in the SEMoS example (marked up with non-semantic `i`),
> and its second occurrence just plain text (no markup).
>
> There are other cases like this, too. I'm checking this one to see if
> I'm on the right track, both with how I'm treating cases like "fey", as
> well as "meridian". Thanks for any help with this!
>

> D.https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/meridianus#Latin

[Alex Cabal]

OK, sounds good

On 3/27/24 4:31 PM, David wrote:
> Thanks, Alex - a couple responses:
>
> I think in this case it's used in the sense of the Latin word for
> "noon"
> and not in an English sense, so you can use <i xml:lang="la">.
>
>
> I guess so, although "meridian" isn't quite a Latin word

> <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/meridianus#Latin>, either. It's a

> distinctively Scots (and obsolete) use of the English word - this is the
> OED entry at this point (which you might have seen already), certainly
> associated with "noon":
>

> meridian-oedx.png
> (Our sentence is even one of the illustrative quotes!)
>
> "Fey", and others like it, are (so Scott claims) being used in
> distinctively Scots ways; some are further defined in endnotes. It's

> being italicized as being /different/ from normal English usage. It's

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[David]

I think I'm almost ready to start proof-reading this brute. 

I could use some guidance with this scenario: this book has both "endnotes" of the normal kind (converted footnotes), and a set of "notes" that give historical or background information for aspects of the novel.

The endnotes have correspond to our standard pattern, of course. But I'm not sure what to do with the "Notes". They are linked by an endnote to the Note itself, so those endnotes have backlinks. But I have not constructed "backlinks" for the Notes which, if they existed, would (I presume) link back to the endnote which would then provide the backlink to the main text.

So: (1) Should there be backlinks from the NOTES? and (2) If so, should they link back to the ENDNOTE which refers to them? or something else?

Thanks!  D.

[Alex Cabal]

There was a similar situation in Ten Days that Shook the World:
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/john-reed/ten-days-that-shook-the-world

In that book, there were endnotes, and then also several appendices that
were linked to from the text body.

In that one, the regular noterefs were formatted as usual, and the
appendix noterefs got a specia format, like <a
href="appendix-11.xhtml#appendix-11-1" epub:type="noteref">A11.1</a>

Then the corresponding appendix entry didn't have a backlink.

So we can do something similar here.

I'm looking at note 1. On page XXIX there's a footnote that says "note
1, author's connection to Quakerism". So I would call that noteref
something like `A1` to distinguish it from the regular endnotes, and
follow the pattern in Ten Days.

On 6/22/24 7:42 AM, David wrote:
> I think I'm /almost/ ready to start proof-reading this brute.

>
> I could use some guidance with this scenario: this book has both
> "endnotes" of the normal kind (converted footnotes), and a set of
> "notes"

> <https://archive.org/details/heartofmidlothia00scot_1/page/n411/mode/2up> that give historical or background information for aspects of the novel.

>
> The endnotes have correspond to our standard pattern

> <https://standardebooks.org/manual/1.8.0/single-page#7.10>, of course.

> But I'm not sure what to do with the "Notes". They are linked by an
> endnote to the Note itself, so those endnotes have backlinks. But I have
> not constructed "backlinks" for the Notes which, if they existed, would

> (I presume) link back to the *endnote* which would then provide the

> backlink to the main text.
>
> So: (1) Should there be backlinks from the NOTES? and (2) If so, should
> they link back to the ENDNOTE which refers to them? or something else?
>
> Thanks!  D.
>

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