[tei-council] sex confession

[Christian Wittern]

Lou Burnard <lou.burnard at computing-services.oxford.ac.uk> writes:

> 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]

I am with 2 here -- I think is is always a good idea to make things
explicit and not to rely on some implicit, tacit assumption.

Christian


-- 
 Christian Wittern 
 Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University
 47 Higashiogura-cho, Kitashirakawa, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8265, JAPAN