Repository path: workshop/experiments/E-20260822c-persian-hands/materials/hands.md · rendered 2026-09-09

Page metadata (front matter)

type	`note`
id	`E-20260822c-hands`
status	`frozen`
created	`2026-08-22`
updated	`2026-08-22`
links	`workshop/experiments/E-20260822c-persian-hands/design.md`, `wiki/base/consulted.md`

The four hands — provenance, extraction, and the state of the text

All four are public domain (1806–1899) and were fetched from the Internet Archive on 2026-08-22 as <identifier>_djvu.txt (uncorrected OCR). The stored file in this directory is the line range covering حکایات ۱–۵ of باب اول only, cut at the marker the edition itself prints.

code	hand	edition	archive.org identifier	lines kept	marker at each end
`GLA`	Francis Gladwin, 1806	Boston 1865 reprint (with Emerson's preface)	`gulistan00unkngoog`	4196–4597	`TALE I.` … before `TALE VI.`
`ROS`	James Ross, 1823	London 1823	`gulistanorflowe00rossgoog`	4685–5203	`APOLOGUE 1.` … before `APOLOGUE 6.`
`EAS`	Edward B. Eastwick, 1852	2nd ed., Trübner's Oriental Series, 1880	`gulistanorrosega00sadiuoft`	1809–2347	`Story I.` … before `Story VI.`
`ARN`	Sir Edwin Arnold, 1899	From the Persian: the Gulistan … the first four bábs	`frompersianguli00arnogoog`	685–1201	`I` … before `VI`

Word counts of the stored spans (OCR, including running heads and scanning artefacts): EAS 3,254 · ROS 2,490 · GLA 2,484 · ARN 2,172, against 1,598 Persian tokens.

What the OCR is like, stated before it is used

The four scans differ in quality and the difference is not random — it tracks how the page was set.

EAS is the cleanest and the easiest to code, because Eastwick labels his verse: every rendered bayt is headed COUPLET., QUATRAIN., VERSE. or similar. His FORM code can be read off the label as well as the layout, and the two are recorded together.
ARN is set in a narrow measure and the OCR breaks his verse lines in places the printer did not; the italic setting Arnold uses for verse survives OCR as scattered \ and ^ marks. FORM is coded from the line-break pattern and the capitalised line-heads, not from the italics.
GLA runs verse into the paragraph as prose — that is Gladwin's policy, not an OCR artefact, and the distinction matters: a FORM = PROSE code for GLA is a fact about the 1806 book.
ROS sets Sa'di's verse as prose inside quotation marks with a leading " on every line; the OCR renders those as ", ^^, ** and ''. This is why every ROS cell's raw text is preserved: the quotation marks are the only signal that Ross knew he was looking at verse.

Stage V exists because of this paragraph. FORM is the lead's reading of nineteenth-century OCR, and the design withholds its primary if two independent seats do not agree with that reading at 0.85.

Copyright hygiene

Public domain in the United States and in the United Kingdom (all four authors died before 1926; the latest text is 1899). Charter §7 / rule 5 governs copyrighted material and does not bind here, but the consultation is logged in wiki/base/consulted.md in the ordinary way so the record is complete.