Divs and Abs

The transcription texts are divided into blocks so that later on the computer can compare the same section of text from various manuscripts. How this affects us at the transcribing stage is that there are divisions (divs) and anonymous blocks (abs) which split up the text into small sections. 

Divs

Each div has been assigned a number. Have a look at this div tag:

This particular div is number 937 and happens to be from the manuscript E2. This is what the 'n' in the tag means - number. The corresponding text in another manuscript, say Q for example, would also have the div number 937. This will allow the computer to recognise that these parts of the two manuscripts relate to the same section of the chronicle.

The opening tag of a div will show its assigned number. For example <div n="937">.

The closing tag of any div does not contain the number, and would simply be </div>. 

A div must be closed before the next div can be opened.

Abs

Each div is divided into several anonymous blocks of text. We call these abs. Again, these are assigned a number. The first ab in a div will have the number 100. The next ab will have 200, then 300 and so on, until the end of the div. 

Like divs, each ab must be closed before the next one can be opened.

The opening tag for an ab looks like this: <ab n="100">

and the closing tag looks like this: </ab>.

Sometimes different manuscripts may have supplementary text which does not appear in other manuscripts of the same text. For example, there may be something in the T manuscript which is not in Ss. In these cases the ab numbers can be edited to tell the computer that this is the case.

Divs and abs can start in one column and end in the next, or the one after that (and so on). Divs can contain lots of abs and last for several folios.

At the bottom of each folio you always need to close the ab and the div. These can be reopened on the following folio if required (if the end of the folio comes before the end of the ab or div). To do this you just use the same number code in the opening tag for the div and for the ab. This tells the computer you are reopening a div or an ab and not starting a new one.

By the time a folio is ready for transcribing by crowdsourcers, the div and ab tags will already be in the transcription. It is very important that you do not alter where these div or ab tags are, or the number contained within them. This would cause a problem with the collation of the various manuscripts later in the project. Under very special circumstances a transcriber may need to add in an extra ab. We will cover this is a later section of the course.