[tei-council] Topics for discussion

[Lou Burnard]

Julia Flanders wrote:

-revision of <index>; this seems confused to me. If the <index> element 
is intended to mark the point in the flow of text where the index entry 
points, this doesn't seem like a good place to put information about how 
the index entry itself is going to look (e.g. "see also" references, 
etc.). Surely the point is that some software comes along and gathers up 
all the <index> elements and processes them into an index entry. No 
single <index> point can be expected to carry the extra information for 
the entry itself. I think the problem is real--this extra information is 
needed--but packing it into <index> doesn't seem like a good approach. I 
also don't see the function of the <indexContent> element; is its 
content intended to become part of the index entry, or is it just the 
basis for a link?

I share Julia's misgivings on this one. I also wonder whether we 
shouldn't be thinking a bit harder about how to integrate topic maps 
with the TEI (John Walsh gave a very good paper on this at DRH, by the 
way) instead of trying to soup <index> up to do something similar.