Exercise3

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For this exercise, create a new test document using the training_template.xml file (save another copy). Using the drama sample text, you're going to encode a more complex document structure.

First, outline the entire document by creating appropriate elements for each of its major pieces:

  • within <front>, you'll need a <titleBlock> (for the title page), and
    elements for the errata list, the table of contents, the prefatory note, the prologue, and the cast list.
  • within <body>, you'll need
    elements for the acts and the scenes. (The sample only includes one scene from the first act.)

Next, transcribe the prefatory note and the Prologue. (Ignore the title page, errata, and contents for now; they are more specialized and we'll come back to them later.) Next, set up the cast list. You'll need several new elements:

<castList>: a formal cast of characters for a dramatic text
<castItem>: for an individual entry in a castlist, describing a single character
<castGroup>: for a grouping of <castItem>s (e.g. "Female Characters")
<role>: the name of a role. The required @xml:id gives a unique identifier for the role; you'll need this once you start encoding the drama itself.
<roleDesc>: the description of a role

Next, encode the opening scene of the play. For this, you'll need a few more elements:

<sp>: for dramatic speeches; contains a <speaker> and either <p> or <lg> depending on whether it's a prose or verse drama. The @who attribute on <sp> points to the @xml:id value of the appropriate <role> element, telling us who the speaker is.
<speaker>: for the speaker label that starts a speech
<stage>: a stage direction; the @type attribute provides information about what type of stage direction it is; see the WWP documentation for specific values and their meaning