[tei-council] ODD manual

[Sebastian Rahtz]

Julia Flanders wrote:

>  For instance, when reading through the example, I find myself 
> wondering what the implications of including an element in a 
> particular class are: does it mean that it gets to use certain 
> attributes? can one add an element to any class at will or is there a 
> possibility of producing something that is self-contradictory at a 
> technical level (that is, it's not just silly--it doesn't work). I 
> don't think (anticipating a possible objection) that the class system 
> needs to be presented in huge detail to bog the reader down, just a 
> brief explanation to anticipate these kinds of questions, with a 
> pointer to some more complete account elsewhere. 

You have come across, I think, a tension in this document which is 
caused by not knowing what what else
people will have read when they come to this stuff.  My intention in 
writing it is that it will appear in a book
about the TEI, which would be self-contained (ie, not mandate access to 
the complete Guidelines). So an earlier chapter would
have explained the class system and answered your (entirely sensible) 
questions.

of course, the big chapter in the Guidelines will need lots of rewriting 
in this area too.

how to predict whether what you do will cause self-contradictory results 
is a thorny issue,
which Laurent's folks raised too. Yesterday I made an Odd which deleted 
<row> but not <table>.
Not surprisingly, the schema was invalid. All my tools so far fail to 
give much help in warning me
this was a dumb thing to do.

-- 
Sebastian Rahtz      
Information Manager, Oxford University Computing Services
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431

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