Colonial Despatches

773 new page-images (in three different sizes) from the following volume have been added to the Colonial Despatches collection: CO 305, Vol 30 (Vancouver Island 1866-1867 Public Offices and Miscellaneous). These will now be linked into the transcription documents.

Dates with @when get title attributes in the HTML, so you see the W3C date format when you hover over them. Other dating attributes are not handled, and probably should be.

282 page images for RG7 G8C vol 21 (in three different sizes) have been added to the collection. These cover the Despatches to London July 1859 to April 1861 (letterbook copies). These will now be linked into the transcription documents where appropriate.

DONE: The transcription of the document 58-01-21_HBC748.rtf is marked up as the file V585MI30, when it should be V585MI02_A. It is already up on the site.

DONE 2012-03-26: The xml:id for the William Allen is currently "william", which is very confusing; change it to "william_allen", and change refs to it, so it's not confused with the Brig William.

NOTE: Completed 2012-04-23. Many new vessel entries have resulted from this work, and they will need to be completed when time permits.

Try this, first in /db/coldesp/correspondence, and then in /db/coldesp/:

xquery version "1.0";

declare default element namespace "http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0";

for $r in //name[@type='vessel'][not(@key)]
return $r

The vessel tags inside the correspondence seem mainly to be for vessels which HAVE write-ups; these should simply be correctly linked with @key. The broader set include vessels which may not have bios yet; bios need to be created, and those vessels linked.

This is a list of stuff that KSW reports needs attention (from his Google Doc "Matters for deliberation"):

• The placement and refreshment process of <name type=”addressee”> tags. See the Search page for details in this. So far, we have been inconsistent with things of this nature. [Martin reports that we may have to address (ha-ha) this later] [KSW update: I believe this had to do with which content appears in the "Addressee" field of the Search page. Some fo the choices appear in square brackets, clearly editor's comments, and there are som eother odd additions. I have added this to my latest TODO list.]
• Who is “EBP”? The name appears in 1859 and beyond. [I have emailed JH with an inquiry, and he does not know. ] [DONE: it has been tagged]
• How to style measurements, especially kilometres (spell it out?) vs. km vs. Km, and so on. Find this in Chicago. [DONE: Chicago uses km, as in “ a 50 km race” -- I added this info to the Guidelines document.]
• Content to tag, or not, in the <notes> [DONE:rules for this are added to the guidelines doc.]
• DONE 2012-03-13: Remove <date> tags from inside all <ref co_ref> tags in 1858.[Presumably this was for consistency, since only 17 files had these tags. They were not only in 1858, though.]
• Tag instances of “the Governor” with Douglas’s tag? [DONE: we only tag this in instances that require clarity.]
• Cotteris and Sons, and the like: to tag or not to tag. And, this raises the larger question on tagging companies. [We do not yet tag for companies. This will have to be written into a grant-cycle, perhaps for 2015? I have made a note of this.]
• To add district-related information to the Victoria profile. For example, some letters refer to the Victoria district. This may take some serious research, mostly in order to determine the historical boundaries of the same. Hmmmm. [DONE: these districts are now tagged.]
• At some point, we will have to search all the image collections for non-transcribed files. I have created a spreadsheet file called “Transcriptions required” for files I have caught, ad-hoc. However, we should approach this problem systematically. One method would be to work through each image collection and confirm, by despatch number, that each image has a transcribed equivalent. [DONE: I created a reference file for this and will add to it as required.]

EDIT: This is fixed as of 2012-01-10.

This task has to do with catchwords and how to position them properly on the website—flush to the right margin of the body-text—when they apear after the final paragraph of a given page, just prior to the page-break.

For now, we have wrapped the FW tag in a P tag, as in the following example:

[...] with a view to their protection and civilization.</p>

<p><fw type="catchword" rend="text-align: right;">I</fw></p><pb n="rg7_g8c_08/rg7_g8c_08_00043v.jpg"/>

<p>I am glad to find that your sentiments respecting [...]

The above is a workaround, as it could be argued that the catchword does not, in itself, represent a paragraph. So, we will need to, eventually, develop a way to display these dangling catchwords appropriately and, in the process, remove the P tags we use now.

This is a call to remove B587055A.xml from the coldesp collection, as it is a duplicate of B587056A.xml.

B587055A.xml is incomplete in its transcription of a private letter found in the 398/1 image collection. B587056A.xml, however, provides a complete transcription and, moreover, it follows the correct sequence within the 398/1 image-collection.