Benchmark transcription file

[Bruce Grant <bgrant@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Nick Pelling wrote:

     Remapping the various VMS transcriptions into XML would be extremely easy:
     but, again, I have to say that the existing transcriptions already serve
     the function of data interchange admirably.


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It seems to me that it would be nice to have a sort of "benchmark transcription"
of the VMS extracted from the EVA transcription which would have these
characteristics:


   * there would be only one transcription (one of the existing ones or a blend)
   * there would be a single transcription alphabet, whatever the "consensus" is
     today (EVA?)
   * the format would be completely uniform and without comments, to facilitate
     analysis by a program
   * the location information (folio, locus, line etc.) would be represented in
     a consistent way throughout (e.g. no "line 0")
   * the distinction of "text" and "labels" would be indicated explicitly.
   * after being created and the formatting verified as correct, the file would
     not change.

Even though such a file would contain less information than the EVA, it would be
useful for the  various statistical tests that people do, making these these
tests directly comparable and repeatable, and allowing the group to accumulate a
set of consistent and useable statistics over time.

Bruce Grant