I'd be really unhappy at the idea of introducing
a temporary kludge which got replaced in a year's
time. That seems like the worst possible outcome.

I'd also be really unhappy to delay the introduction
of <precision>, if it holds up Epidoc from moving
to P5. Perhaps it is just the circles I move in,
but I see bringing Epidoc back into the fold
as big deal.

In practice, I think the fact that XPath 2 and 
URI + XPointer can theoretically do the same job
is just a confusing state which we have to live with.
I believe that the distinction between

 - target: identifies the single point in the document
   which is the context for the assertion
 - path: describes the nodeset in relation to the context
   which we'd like to make a remark about

_is_ clear enough.

Whether we add @path as an alternate/extension to other
places where @target now lives depends on an analysis
of those contexts. Remember that XPath identifies
a node in an XML structure, while a URI identifies a
resource of any time. So @resp="lou.png" is as legal
as @resp="#lou". so XPath is not a a universal answer.
-- 
Sebastian Rahtz    
Oxford University Computing Services