[tei-council] sex confession

[Julia Flanders]

Solution 2 sounds reasonable to me. I like the fact that it makes a 
clear distinction between the ISO codes and the value which is not a 
member thereof.

Julia

>Problem
>-------
>We agreed to use ISO 5218 codes for the value of sex= of <person> and
><personGrp>:
>     * 0 = not known,
>     * 1 = male,
>     * 2 = female,
>     * 9 = not specified.
>However, <personGrp> (at least as P4 conceives it) requires an
>additional value: "mixed" -- the group contains people of different
>sexes.
>
>Solutions
>---------
>Some possible solutions are:
>1. Add a new numeric code, say "7", that means "mixed", to data.sex.
>2. Use
>      attribute sex { data.sex | "mixed" }
>    for sex= of <personGrp>
>3. Change the datatype so that the values are "not known", "male",
>    "female", and "not specified", and then use #2.
>4. Remove "mixed" from the possible values of sex= of <personGrp> and
>    either
>    a) say "you can't say that -- tough", or
>    b) say "if sex= is *not* specified, it is presumed to be mixed"
>5. Remove sex= from <personGrp> entirely -- if you want to know,
>    check the children[1]
>
>At the moment I am leaning towards #2, at least until those who work
>on our "prosopography" work on the issue. With this solution the
>datatype still maps cleanly to ISO, and it is very clear which values
>of sex= of <personGrp> are from ISO (numeric codes) and which are
>made up by TEI (contain letters).
>
>
>Note
>----
>[1] The following fragment of XSLT 1.1 does the job iff there are
>     only male and female children. One could obviously extend this to
>     cover the "not known" and "not specified" cases as well.
>
>   <xsl:template match="personGrp">
>     <xsl:variable name="sex">
>       <xsl:choose>
>         <xsl:when test="count(./person[@sex='1']) = 0 and 
>count(./person[@sex='2']) > 0">
>           <xsl:text>all female</xsl:text>
>         </xsl:when>
>         <xsl:when test="count(./person[@sex='1']) > 0 and 
>count(./person[@sex='2']) = 0">
>           <xsl:text>all male</xsl:text>
>         </xsl:when>
>         <xsl:when test="count(./person[@sex='1']) > 0 and 
>count(./person[@sex='2']) > 0">
>           <xsl:text>mixed company</xsl:text>
>         </xsl:when>
>       </xsl:choose>
>     </xsl:variable>
>     <xsl:message>
>       personGrp # <xsl:value-of select="@n"/> is <xsl:value-of 
>select="$sex"/>.
>     </xsl:message>
>   </xsl:template>
>
>    Of course, one could go a lot further:
>
>         <xsl:when test="count(./person[@sex='1']) > 0.6 * count(./person)">
>           <xsl:text>mostly male</xsl:text>
>         </xsl:when>
>         <xsl:when test="count(./person[@sex='2']) > 0.6 * count(./person)">
>           <xsl:text>mostly female</xsl:text>
>         </xsl:when>
>
>    (BTW, I'm not claiming this is *good* XSLT code, just proof of
>    concept.)
>
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