| sectionid | title | version |
|---|---|---|
headerRevisionDescription |
Revision Description |
v4 |
The final sub-element of the MEI header, the {% include link elem="revisionDesc" %} element, provides a detailed change log in which each change made to a text may be recorded. Its use is optional but highly recommended. It provides essential information for the administration of large numbers of files which are being updated, corrected, or otherwise modified as well as extremely useful documentation for files being passed from researcher to researcher or system to system. Without change logs, it is easy to confuse different versions of a file, or to remain unaware of small but important changes made in the file by some earlier link in the chain of distribution. No change should be made in any MEI-conformant file without corresponding entries being made in the change log.
{% include desc elem="revisionDesc" %} {% include desc elem="change" %}
The main purpose of the revision description is to record changes in the text to which a header is prefixed. However, it is recommended practice to include entries also for significant changes in the header itself (other than the revision description itself, of course). At the very least, an entry should be supplied indicating the date of creation of the header.
The log consists of a list of {% include link elem="change" %} elements, each of which contains a detailed description of the changes made. If a number is to be associated with one or more changes (for example, a revision number), the @n attribute may be used to indicate it. The person responsible for the change and the date of the change may be indicated by the {% include link elem="respStmt" %} and {% include link elem="date" %} elements. The description of the change itself is contained within the {% include link elem="changeDesc" %} element, which can hold one or more paragraphs.
It is recommended to give changes in reverse chronological order, most recent first.
For example:
{% include mei example="header/header-sample076.xml" valid="" %}
A slightly shorter form for recording changes is also available when a the date of the change can be described by a single date in a standard ISO form and when the name of the agent(s) responsible for the change, encoded elsewhere in the header, can be referred to by one or more URIs given in the @resp attribute. For example:
{% include mei example="header/header-sample077.xml" valid="" %}