The place keyword and text positioning
Use of the place keyword to encode the vertical and horizontal position of elements whose position on the page is unconstrained
The TEI provides a place attribute on the note, add, and addSpan elements which can be used to indicate their location on the page. If you are doing a detailed encoding of the renditional information for your documents, it may make more sense to encode information about placement as part of the rend attribute, so that all of the renditional information is captured in a single place. The rendition ladder system includes a place keyword that serves this function.
The place keyword indicates the vertical and horizontal position of elements which can occur anywhere on the page, and whose vertical position is not determined by their location within the encoded stream of text. This distinguishes it from the align keyword, which is used to indicate the horizontal position of elements which can only slide horizontally, and whose vertical position is indicated by where they are encoded. We discuss here its use for note, add, and addSpan, because these are the most typical elements that behave in this way, but it can be used on any element whose position on the page is not directly within the flow of text and hence must be described in more detail.
Suggested values for the place keyword:
- margin-left, margin-right: these values indicate that the element appears in the left or right margin of the page. (See outside and inside, below.)
- inline: for additions which are inline; for instance, overwriting or additions to the end of a line
- supra: for additions above the line
- infra: for additions below the line
- top: for additions which appear at the top of the page
- bottom: for additions which appear at the bottom of the page
The top and bottom values are useful if the addition is marked with some sort of anchor within the text, rather than being completely separate from the text flow.
- outside, inside: these indicate that the note appears in the outside or inside margin; this can be useful for setting defaults, since it makes it unnecessary to use left and right in cases where a note is always on the inside or outside margin
- opposite: for notes which fall on the page opposite the one where they are anchored
- overleaf: for notes which are anchored on a recto page but fall on the verso of that page
- inset-left, inset-right, inset-outside, inset-inside: for notes which actually intrude into the text block rather than being out in the margin; these values interact in the same way that left/right/inside/outside do. Note that these inset-x values should only be used in cases where a space in the main text block has been carved out for the insertion of a marginal note, stage direction, or other piece of text which is not part of the main reading flow of the text. They should not be used for cases where text blocks are placed horizontally across the page (e.g. in closers and openers, where there may be several little chunks of text arranged next to one another).
- foot, end: these indicate whether a note is an endnote or a footnote
- headspace, footspace: these indicate the space of the running header or footer, at the top or bottom of the page
- mixed: this indicates that the element in question is in various places too numerous to mention, and is a kind of emergency catchall for cases that cannot be described systematically and need to be flagged for special attention.