Tanselle's Foreword to Electronic Textual Editing

http://www.tei-c.org/About/Archive_new/ETE/Preview/tanselle.xml

"Procedures and routines will be different; concepts and issues will not"

In his foreword, Tanselle depicts a historical shift by which, soon, the idea of "book" will no longer be tied to the solid codex form which every generation until ours has been accostumed to. He then mentions the importance of "presentation" and (as we might expect...) the need for reader awareness of any work's textual history. He suggests that the computer can act as facilitator of any sort of reading experience, but that it does not "alter[s] the ontology of texts and make[s] possible new kinds of reading and analysis". His primary concern involves the reliability of the text, and he believes the digital age cannot operate a break in the fundamental operations involved in reading, for an electronic text or a paper-based one are but "appearances" of a work. As a "tool", the computer can facilitate approaches to a text (especially thorough scholarly ones), but everything that is possible with the assistance of the digital medium was, at least technically, already possible before. Would the editor, say, of the Rossetti Archive agree with this stance?