On 2012-08-06 10:40, Dovi Jacobs wrote:
*I hope all of this is clearer than my original inquiry.*
Yes, indeed. Thanks.
*Was anything discussed at Wikimedia (including Aubrey’s various layers) that might make solutions possible for functions like these?
No, not that I'm aware. But I was not present during unconference on Sunday July 15.
Your examples 1 and 2 are the combination of two printed editions or variants into one digital product. That process is scholarly, text-critical editing, an intellectual exercise. For example, if the British and American editions would be found to differ not only in spelling but also in content, you would have to develop a policy for how to deal with that. The current process in Wikisource, as supported by the ProofreadPage extension, doesn't address such issues, but only converts one printed edition into a digital edition, through scanned images and human proofreading. It is a much more limited task, a mostly non-intellectual exercise, guided by simple rules.
Your example 3 is more of a current issue, in my mind. Concrete cases can be found with Bibles, but also with one book that I added, The Kinematics of Machinery, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Kinematics_of_Machinery http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:The_Kinematics_of_Machinery.djvu This book has chapters, numbered sections, and endnotes. I developed an advanced template for these links, that should be used when proofreading the text, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Template:Tkom
But still, for a certain section (e.g. § 2), should the template link to the Page: namespace, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:The_Kinematics_of_Machinery.djvu/58 or to the transclusion page in the main namespace? http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Kinematics_of_Machinery/Chapter_1#36 It can't link to both. Ideally, ProofreadPage would be remade so that each position in the book (a certain chapter, a certain page, a certain paragraph) has only one unique address. This is an aspect that apparently was not considered when the current software and namespace architecture were developed.