[tei-council] Further ruminations on index

[Sebastian Rahtz]

Lou Burnard wrote:

> a) the <divGen> element, used to mark the point where a  div typically
> containing an index or toc is to be generated, currently has no way of
> specifying headers or footers for the generated div, other than by the
> use of the global n attribute. That overloading seems to be
> inadequate, as well as potentially falling foul of all the other known
> problems inherent in text-valued attributes.  I therefore propose to
> change the content of divGen from  "empty" to  "zero-or-more elements
> from the tei.divtop class". Any objections/counter suggestions?

It strikes me as a cleaner way to proceed. Speaking as an implementor,
it would make my life easier not having
to maintain a separate place where the heading is specified

>
> b) the <index> element currently has a close relative called
> <indexSpan> which is used when the indexed point is a span. The only
> difference between the two is that the latter has an additional
> attribute "to" which indicates the end of the  span. It seems to me
> that this is a rather cumbersome method of doing the job. Furthermore,
> since <index> (and therefore <indexSpan>) can now be nested
> recursively, the content model gets a little complicated. It occurs to
> me that we could simplify matters by (a) removing <indexSpan> (b)
> defining an attribute "scope" or "range" or even "target" on <index>
> with a default value of "here" but with the option to include any URL.

I seem to recall suggesting the same thing a few months back when this
came up before, so I like it.

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

OSS Watch: JISC Open Source Advisory Service
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk