Renaming the EGD

[danbalogh]

For the next release of the EGD, I propose to rename it to Encoding Guide for Documentary Editions (instead of Diplomatic). The acronym remains the same, so I don't foresee much confusion resulting from the title change. Rationale: the editions described in the EGD aren't just diplomatic editions: they are more comprehensive than that ("paradigmatic editions") and include e.g. restoration and emendation. The term "documentary edition" is well established and often seen as a counterpart to a critical edition, coming perhaps originally from Tanselle. See also e.g. https://scholarlyediting.org/2014/essays/essay.pierazzo.html for a discussion.

Please let me know if anyone disagrees with that.

[arlogriffiths]

Since we are co-authors of this guide, perhaps discussion about such issues should take place between us two first before being moved into the public arena.

I am not necessarily against this proposal but let's take some time to ponder and reach an agreement. I have read Pierazzo's piece, and thank you for sharing it. At the moment, my hesitation is due to the term "Documentary Edition" having no currency (that I am aware of) whether in circles of epigraphists or in South/Southeast Asian studies. None of Pierazzo's examples concern epigraphy, and of course none of them concern our part of the world.

Another option might be to rename the Guide in conformity with what we originally were trying to do, and what is still the core of what we're doing, namely to document how inscriptions should be encoded. (This would require finding a solution for the "diplomatic editions" of manuscripts that we have, which in any case require a solution as @michaelnmmeyer affirms that they do not actually follow the same encoding rules.) And of course we could simply sticvk to the name that we have while adding a conceptual discussion in the preamble.

I don't have time for discussing this further at short notice so no need to respond immediately.

[danbalogh]

Plenty of time to discuss this in the fullness of time, there's no need to respond quickly. We can also continue this over email if you prefer; I put it on GitHub because this way, it stays here even if we don't come to a final decision now, while in an email, it just sinks to the bottom of the box.
I don't insist on the change but find "documentary" better than "diplomatic". I recall that when we changed the title from simply "Encoding Guide" to "Encoding Guide for Diplomatic Editions", the reason for this was that we wanted some explicit distinction from the EGC, and because no better term occurred to us, we settled on Diplomatic. I now feel that Documentary is a better counterpart to Critical, and if the term is not current among epigraphists, I think that's because almost all epigraphic editions are documentary by nature, so there isn't really a need to make this explicit. I'm also open to renaming to Epigraphic editions or suchlike.