[tei-council] EDW90 proposals (1 of several)

[Lou Burnard]

I agree with Jas that there might be cases where you'd want to use 
something different for a sigil and for an ID. However, (a) it's pretty 
hard to understand what function a "sigil" attribute on <witness> might 
perform which wouldn't be covered by *either* the xml:id attribute *or* 
the n attribute (b) an attribute that then cites the sigil has to be 
*either* a URL *or* NOT.  P4 shilly-shallies on this basic distinction 
all over the place and It Has To Stop.


James Cummings wrote:

> Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
>
>>> Really good point. The problem is that "they", the folks who use
>>> <witness>, already have sigil= in P4. So it's not a question of
>>> letting "them" have a special name, it will be viewed more as taking
>>> away the special name currently available.
>>
>> If @sigil *is* a normal ID, there is no argument, it must be @xml:id.
>> Unless James can argue his case in full court.
>
>
> Under P4 @sigil is datatype CDATA.  And "indicates the sigil for one 
> witness or for one group of witnesses to which readings are assigned 
> in a critical apparatus".  Indicating the sigil, to me, doesn't mean 
> the same thing as providing an element ID.  Is it possible, for 
> example, for a well-known standard sigil to comprise of something 
> which doesn't form a proper @xml:id?
>
> The notes to <witness> instead point to one of the uses of @id on this 
> as the sigil: "In local encoding schemes, the value of the id 
> attribute can be used as the sigil, and the declared value of the wit 
> attribute may be changed to IDREF, so as to ensure that only witnesses 
> referred to in a <witness> element contained within a <witList> may 
> occur in the value of any wit attribute on a reading element within an 
> apparatus."  This implies to me that there are also instances where 
> one wouldn't want @id to be used as the sigil. Although this 
> validation is useful (and what @id is meant for) providing this 
> validation is not the point of the @sigil attribute.  It just strikes 
> me that the sigil attribute is used to record a sigil, which may, or 
> may not, be the same as an @id.
>
> In addition, as Syd says, it seems like P5 (which provides such 
> benefits for manuscript encoding) then would be removing the ability 
> to record a sigil.  <witness xml:id="MS123"> doesn't mean the
> same thing as <witness sigil="123"> or <witness xml:id="MS123" 
> sigil="123">.
>
> But I've not really given it any serious thought yet, and as I said, 
> I'm willing to be convinced.
>
> -James
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