<lb/>

Validation Information:

[table border="1" colwidth="115"]
Rules,Values

Contained by:,<add>|<back>|<body>|<date>|<del>|<div>|<floatingText>|<front><head>|<hi>|<l>|<lg>|<metamark>|<note>|<num>|<p>|<restore>|<seg>|<sic>|<sp>|<speaker>|<stage>|<stamp>|<text>|<unclear>

May contain:,none (empty element)
Attributes:,@rend
[/table]

What is it?

The <lb/> element is an empty element that marks a line break, and so we put one at the end of every typographic line in the document. The differences between our different types of line breaks allow some of these line breaks to be made visible in some of the edition's views, while remaining invisible in others. Please note that the word 'line' in 'line break' does not refer to verse lines. Verses should be tagged using the <l> element, not the <lb/> element.

Attributes

We distinguish 3 types of <lb/>s:

  1. hard returns for all views (without a @rend attribute),
  2. soft returns for the image/text view (@rend="it"),
  3. and hyphenated soft returns (@rend="-it").
Hard returns

This tag is reserved for those rare cases where the author has clearly broken off a line for his own reasons, rather than being obliged to do so because of the document's limited dimensions. It is not necessary, however, to put such a bare <lb/> at the end of each paragraph: in those cases, closing the <p> tag will suffice.

An example of this could be a prose passage with some lines of dialogue. Each "turn" in the dialog is not a paragraph in itself, there are  <lb/> tags between turns to encode the hard return.

Soft returns

The letters of the @rend attribute's value stand for 'image/text', meaning that the line break is to be visualized in the 'image/text' view, but not in the 'text' view. This is the most current type of line break, that takes place every time the author reaches the end of a line, and continues to write on the next one.

Hyphenated soft returns

In those cases of @rend="it" where the author splits a word in two, using a hyphen, we use the "-it" value. This way, the word will be hyphenated in the 'image-text' view, but merged back together in the 'text' view.

Special Cases

The hyphen is part of the word

When the hyphen at the end of the line is part of the word or phrase itself (such as in the French phrase: "c'est-à-dire"), we hardcode the hyphen, and end the line with a regular @rend="it" line break. This way, the hyphen will be visible in both the 'text' view and the 'image/text' view. Please make sure not to write a space before or after the line break in those cases.

For example:

[xml highlight="3"]

c'est-<lb rend="it">à-dire

is CORRECT[/xml]

while:

[xml highlight="3"]

c'est-<lb rend="it"> à-dire

is INCORRECT

[/xml]

The end of the sentence coincides with the end of a line

In those cases where the end of the sentence and the end of the line are one and the same, please put the <lb/> tag inside the <seg> tag, as this will make sure that the line break will be visible in the 'image/text' view. For example:

[xml]

<seg>This sentence ends at the end of the line<lb rend="it"/></seg>

[/xml]

Spacing

We recommend you to transcribe the manuscript as follows:

  1. transcribe a line of text,
  2. leave a space,
  3. put in the linebreak,
  4. take a hard return (or two),
  5. and continue coding on the next line:

[xml] <p><seg>An example sentence.</seg> <seg>A se<lb rend="-it"/>

cond sentence.</seg> <seg>Followed by a third <lb rend="it"/>

sentence, that ends exactly at the line break.<lb rend="it"/>

</seg> <seg>And then a last one.<seg></p>[/xml]

Our basic principle applies: if you leave out all of the tags and hard returns, you will have a normally spaced text.

An other option (that makes it a little easier to encode, but a little harder to compare your transcription with the manuscript) would be to use a hard return for every <seg>, rather than after every <lb/>. For example:

[xml] <p>
<seg>An example sentence.</seg>
<seg>A se<lb rend="-it"/>cond sentence.</seg>
<seg>Followed by a third <lb rend="it"/>sentence, that ends exactly at the line break.<lb rend="it"/></seg>
<seg>And then a last one.<seg>
</p>[/xml]

Of course, you don't have to take a hard return after every <lb/> or <seg>, you can also transcribe the text on a single line of code. For example:

[xml] <p><seg>An example sentence.</seg> <seg>A se<lb rend="-it"/>cond sentence.</seg> <seg>Followed by a third <lb rend="it"/>sentence, that ends exactly at the line break.<lb rend="it"/></seg> <seg>And then a last one.<seg></p>[/xml]

However, this makes your transcription very difficult to read, both for human readers, and for computers: an XML document that uses fewer hard returns will take longer to load than a document that uses more of them.