[tei-council] sex confession

Lou Burnard lou.burnard at computing-services.oxford.ac.uk
Sun Oct 23 05:31:07 EDT 2005


Sorry, I havent contributed to this discussion yet, being busy in Nancy 
(on which more anon), but just for the record my recommendation is for  4.b

Syd Bauman wrote:

>>>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]
> 
> 
> JF> Solution 2 sounds reasonable to me. I like the fact that it makes
> JF> a clear distinction between the ISO codes and the value which is
> JF> not a member thereof.
> 
> SR> My preference is for 4, followed by 5,  followed by 2.
> 
> 
> I think 1 is a bad idea, as it's confusing, and what do we do when
> ISO updates their standard and uses the number we picked?
> 
> I like 3, but have already been outvoted on that.
> 
> 4a and 5 turn out to have a major problem -- a <personGrp> element
> does not group a bunch of <person> elements, but rather just
> describes the group. Thus it *needs* to be able to say "mixed", and I
> can well imagine people wanting even more precision than that. (E.g.,
> to be able to specify exact counts, or rough percentages, of each
> sex.)
> 
> So I think we are down to 2 or 4b. For the moment I've checked in a
> version that uses 2. Those who want to argue for 4b or a system that
> allows more flexibility and precision should speak up now (and thus
> be drafted for the <soCalled>prosopography</soCalled> WG! :-)
> 
> _______________________________________________
> tei-council mailing list
> tei-council at lists.village.Virginia.EDU
> http://lists.village.Virginia.EDU/mailman/listinfo/tei-council
> 





More information about the tei-council mailing list