Handling multiple dates

[rettinghaus]

TEI allows multiple <date> elements within <correspAction>.

1. it should be made clear, what that means and when to use it (e.g. multiple writing sessions?)

2. do we really want to have multiple dates in CMIF? Could be problematic to deal with or to process.

[peterstadler]

My spontaneous reaction is to disallow multiple dates in CMIF …

[StefanDumont]

Concerning this topic, see also the (more general) discussion, started by Martin Prell on the TEI mailinglist: https://listserv.brown.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=TEI-L;82da749f.2308

[riedde]

This is just to give a usecase.

At the Henze-Digital project we also have multiple dates in the <correspAction>. In my project dates can occur in the source, on the envelope (as postal stamp) or can be supplied by the editor (also combinations are possible, e.g. when the source doesn't tell the year). But I am not sure if CMIF needs to repesent all the details we record.

[rettinghaus]

Thanks @riedde, but the dates from the source and the postal stamp seem to describe different correspActions. Do you actually encode both dates within a single correspAction?

[riedde]

@rettinghaus Ah, I never thought about this. We have one <correspAction type="sent"> containing multiple dates classified by a @type. (Not the final solution!)
How would you split the correspAction?

[peterstadler]

How would you split the correspAction?

Just give separate correspAction for every event like

<correspAction type="sent">
   <date when="1810-01-01"/>
</correspAction>
<correspAction type="stamped">
   <date when="1810-01-02"/>
</correspAction>
<correspAction type="transmitted">
   <date when="1810-01-03"/>
</correspAction>

NB, this for vanilla TEI. I wouldn't recommend providing all this information in CMIF!

[rettinghaus]

So could we agree on allowing only a single date element per correspAction?