Re: Reverse documentation

[Teri Nava-Vaughn <navavaughn@geocities.com>]

Poster: Teri Nava-Vaughn <navavaughn@geocities.com>

Terry L. Neill wrote:

> It may end up through research that the particular thing you are attempting to
> document is utterly out of period.  But by then, you've found so much more that
> is appropriate and have learned a lot in the process.

The end result could also be that you spent 40 hours researching
something that 
was not period.  As I get older, I find I have much less time available
for my
hobbies.  I'd rather spend 5 hours coming up with something that was
period
in the first place.  It's often just as easy to grasp an understanding
of 
period techniques and then translate them into modern ones as it is to
go 
the other way around.  Also, I know that I am inherently lazy.  If it
took 
me a month, or a year, to figure out how something is done modernly, it
will 
be at least another year before I get up the energy to figure out the
period 
method (if I get around to it at all.)

>From a competitive documentation standpoint, as I believe this
conversation 
evolved from originally, the person who says, for example, "I should
have 
ground white lead for this pigment, but as that is highly toxic, I used 
a lead substitute instead," will score much higher and have a better
received 
piece than the person who had no understanding of what period pigments 
should contain.  

There's a decent guide to undertaking a research project for the purpose
of 
SCA documentation on the Web.  It covers this issue as well as the very
real 
issue of secondary and terciary source mistranslation.  It's at
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/atlantia/moas/handbook.html#_Toc388686398

Sorry to be so long winded,
C o'Stow
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