[tei-council] numbered divs

[Sebastian Rahtz]

You'll recall the growing movement to kill the numbered <divN> elements.
Some suggest that they be made optional, in their own module.

Experimenting with this makes me realize that it cannot easily work,
because of the way we construct content models. We say (simplified):
(
    div
    (div | global)*
|
    div1
    (div1 | global)*
)

ie if you start with <div>, you cannot lurch off  into <div1>

If  we now delete div1, we get
(
    div
    (div | global)*
|
    (global)*
)

which is ambiguous in DTDs (and W3C schemas, I think)

Of course, you should say  I should detect this in the ODD processing,
and zap the extra "| (global)*", but
thats not at all easy.

if we said
(
    div | div1
    ( div | div1 | global)*
)

the problem would go away, at the cost of allowing the absurdity of

 <div1>
 </div1>
 <div>
 </div>

does anyone feel that the looseness of this is unacceptable?

-- 
Sebastian Rahtz      
Information Manager, Oxford University Computing Services
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431

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