Dovi wrote:
"Just so people can get a better idea of what we are dealing with at Hebrew
Wikisource, I would like to radically build upon Sébastien's example. Imagine a
literature which until a century ago was mostly published in a fashion that
lacked not just some updated spelling, but far more: Zero vowelization, zero
punctuation (periods, commas, etc.), zero division into paragraphs of
reasonable size, zero precise citation of exact sources (when an average work
cites many thousands of sources by quoting them verbatum or as paraphrase but
rarely provides the exact reference). Regarding the latter, the ability to
easily put in wikilinks to sources is the ultimate tool for revolutionizing the
entire body of literature as a whole, and not just the specific book at hand.
Now on the one hand, any modern published edition of these same source texts
adds all of these features to the great benefit of readers, but they are all of
course copyrighted! On the other hand, to simply post the plain text on
Wikisource without vowelization, punctuation, division into paragraphs and
citation of sources provides little benefit to users. And I once again
emphasize that this is the case for the *majority* of public domain literature
in the language! (By the way, nothing I've written about here is a critical
edition; that is something that goes beyond this. Rather, this is what is
involved just to present an average text in a usable fashion.)
There is no question that even adding this basic level of styling to a text
involves creative effort, and therefore it is possible, even likely, that two
different editors might differ sometimes on details. But in practice, we've
found that cooperation and collaboration in wiki style, far from creating
problems, is actually a congenial and enjoyable way to provide classic texts to
the public in a useful way.
Dovi"
In Swedish (sv) we have regularly talks about how long-s: ſ, dubble-s: ß etc
should be written on Wikisource. The conclusion is not always the same.
It often depends of the age of the text, and the nature of it. If we correct
spelling, or not, depends on the age. There were no such thing as a standard for
spelling in the 15'th century-swedish. The texts I work with is filled with
latin words and therefor influence from latin grammar. I also see æ regularly,
even if it dissapeared from the swedish language during the 16's century,
together with everything that reminds about Denmark. The way the swedish
letters åäö, looked in the 16'th to 18'th century, is very different from
today, but we choose to write modern versions on wikisource.
Old texts can also be filled with tiny lines, that show that a word is missing
one or a few letters. (thn instead of then) It is obvious that paper and ink
was expensive in the old days./Ronnie
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