Missing documentation: <physMedium>

[gucl-mu]

I quickly created a new issue so that we don't get confused and the discussion runs separately. This is @riedde s first draft:

Within physMedium the material of which an object is composed (physical materials, such as ink, paper, etc.) can be recorded. This can be done by using a single physMedium element containing the whole description or by using multiple physMedium elements for recording different materials separately. This container element may contain textual content and semantic markup. Because of the rich model class model.physDescPart the container can also contain highly structured code.

<physDesc xmlns="http://www.music-encoding.org/ns/mei" meiversion="5.1-dev+anyStart"> <physMedium>Thick yellow paper.</physMedium> <physMedium>Extra paper <height unit="mm">35</height>x<width unit="mm">150</width> glued on the source.</physMedium> <physMedium>Black ink is used for the notes, red ink for the dynamics</physMedium> </physDesc>

by using multiple physMedium elements for recording different materials separately. --> I would not recommend this, on the one hand I wonder whether a source can have more than one physMedium. Is it one object carrier or several (more of a philosophical question perhaps). More importantly, it seems to me that the same effect you suggest can be achieved within a physmedium through paragraphs. On the other hand, physMedium as an element with its history (no equivalent in TEI and introduced because the object description was not as mature earlier in MEI 3) is a remnant and perhaps one should rather suggest using the numerous other elements such as <supportDesc>, <extent>, <dimensions> etc. For me it would be important to clarify how physMedium relates to other elements such as <supportDesc>, <handList> or <bindingDesc>. And then whether these elements might be linked to each other

[ahankinson]

An object can have multiple physical media. A CD and a paper booklet in one object is one example. The description is also generic enough that it can cover different types of ink, sewing, gathering, and other qualities.

[riedde]

Just as backround information: I created the descripten out of the element defintion and the remarks there. I'm absolutely open for input!

@gucl-mu I descriped the way of using multiple <physMedium> elements because it is possible in the current schema, but I didn't reflect that by now!

I agree on the comment of @gucl-mu but also @ahankinson. Maybe we should make a destinction here:

"In case of a combinition of multiple media (e.g., CD and booklet) a <physMedium> element can be used for discribing each. If there is only one carrier medium the description can be placed in a single <physMedium> element. The number of <physMedium> elements to be used depends on what is to be recorded."

Something like this give just a hint how to handle but does not say "don't it otherwise". From my perspective, it may be possible to cover different types of ink, other qualities in seperate physMedium but I would not reccomend this to describe multiple qualities of one carrier medium. (In that case I would expect nesting.)