[tei-council] Datatype : roundup

[Lou Burnard]

Rather than repeat with comment all the last few days messages, here is 
my take on where I think we now are.

1. No-one has dissented from the basic objective of providing tei 
datatypes which together cover the full range of current requirements as 
identified in Syd's edw90 table. There has been debate chiefly where the 
requirements identified there don't map tidily on to existing W3C 
datatypes.

2. Here are my proposals for resolving the currently debated issues:

a. tei.data.notation : renamed as tei.data.pattern and explicitly tied 
to regular  expression syntax [some debate is needed on how we define 
this: syd's original proposal suggested we should support only the W3C 
rather restricted version of regexps, i.e. the pattern has to be 
"anchored". Is that OK, or are we supporting apache-style 
perl-compatible regexps? or just the original syntax built into grep 
(but not egrep)?]

b. split the currently defined tei.data.name into two: tei.data.ident 
and tei.data.name  -- the former is used for those cases where the name 
concerned *must* be an XML-compatible name and maps to xsd:Name ; the 
latter for names of any kind excluding spaces (mapping to NMTOKEN?)

c. add a pattern to the list of alternatives proposed for 
tei.data.temporal which  supports  right-truncated times (just don't say 
i didnt tell you it'll all end in tears)

d. define  tei.data.probability as a value between 0 and 1 only

e. define tei.data. numeric as double, rather than decimal

I've now changed all the definitions accordingly, added a little bit 
more explication, and regenerated the HTML preview pages at 
http://www.tei-c.org/Drafts/DTYPES/

I am sure Council members are anxious to move on from this rather 
tedious subject to the exciting challenges of rethinking the class 
system, but it would be REALLY HELPFUL if they could give this latest 
iteration a quick read through and comment as to whether or not they think

-- the list of datatypes proposed is adequate to our needs (as 
summarized in edw90)
-- the definitions for them proposed are reasonably comprehensible and 
adequate

We could then move on...