Critical Edition Typesetting with LaTeX
For typesetting
critical editions in the traditional manner
with LaTeX, there are (somewhat basically)
two macro packages:
When both packages were devised, critical edition typesetting with
TeX required the EDMAC
macros by Dominik Wujastyk and John Lavagnino. EDMAC,
however, is not compatible with LaTeX, which many prefer to Plain TeX.
So ledmac was written as (almost) a port of EDMAC
to LaTeX (while its functionality has increased much since).
ednotes was written as an attempt at a somewhat smarter user
interface than that of EDMAC.
For a quick comparison of ednotes and ledmac here
(assuming you have some prior knowledge):
- Where you type
\edtext{lemma}{\Afootnote{note}}
with
ledmac, you type
\Anote{lemma}{note}
with
ednotes (hey!).
- Where you type
\edtext{lemma}{\Afootnote{note A}\Bfootnote{note B}} with
ledmac,
you type
\Bnote{\Anote{lemma}{note A}}{note B} with
ednotes (oh
…).
-
Learning
ledmac may be
easy for former
EDMAC users,
while learning
ednotes may be
easier for former LaTeX users. E.g.,
ledmac
introduces its own user macros for
tables, while
ednotes
supplies LaTeX tabular environments
with hooks for critical editing internally,
i.e.: without bothering users. On the other
hand, the
EDMAC macros
for the appearance of line numbers
(in the margins) have been retained in
ledmac,
while with
ednotes the
user is referred to the commands of
Stephan I. Böttcher’s
.
- You can handle overlapping lemmas
with
ledmac when line
breaks have been fixed; you can handle
overlapping lemmas with
ednotes without
this precondition.
-
ledmac offers
features like endnotes,
columnar footnotes, and quite a few
very new things which
ednotes
does not provide (at present).
Most notably, a package
ledpar
adds parallel typesetting in columns
or on facing pages (translations, e.g.).
- For editing verse (poetry, plays),
ledmac and
John Burt’s
poemscol
package offer special facilities.
Here are a few links for learning more on
the matters mentioned above (etc.):
“Lyrics” by Uwe Lück.
Thanks to Karl Berry (TUG president and
TUGboat editor) for the (La)TeX links!
Top of Page
Last modified Apr 28, 2011.
|
