[tei-council] FAND faces setback

[David J Birnbaum]

Dear Counselors,
> the ideal answer is a much more thorough odd2odd process, which
> would remove all ambiguities. I  freely confess, I don't think I could
> write it myself.
>
> other alternatives:
>
>  1. pure FAND: kill numbered divs now and forever. anyone who wants 
> them back writes their own content model
>
>  2. loosen the current content model to allow interleaved <div>, 
> <div1> and <div0>. it would be nonsense, but so? does it really 
> justify immense mental effort and time spent protecting people from 
> being dumb?
>
>  2a. do 2, but add a schematron rule to say you can't have div and 
> div1|divo in the same document
>
>  3. trap the situation in Roma code ad hoc
>
> I really really don't want to do 3. if I can help it :-{
Er ... what is the opinion within Council about whether numbered divs 
are a Good Idea?

I ask because Council is charged with guiding the technical development 
of the Guidelines, and if we, as members of Council, conclude 
overwhelmingly that numbered divs are a Bad Idea, it would seem 
appropriate for us to implement #1. That doesn't prevent anyone who 
wants them from introducing them ad hoc, after all; it just means that 
Council thinks they're a Bad Idea, and we wouldn't be fulfilling our 
oversight responsibilities if, having reached that conclusion, we 
nonetheless facilitated their deployment. #1 would prevent people from 
being dumb, but it would do so without immense mental effort and time. 
Transformation of numbered divs to unnumbered ones is much easier than 
the reverse, so abolishing numbered divs would not erect insurmountable 
obstacles with respect to legacy documents.

The preceding paragraph makes sense only if Council very strongly 
believes that numbered divs are a Bad Idea. Should we discover, instead, 
that there is significant support for numbered divs within Council, #1 
would be be inappropriate. Since we have a conference call coming up 
very shortly, would that be a good time to take a quick straw vote?

Best,

David
djbpitt+tei at pitt.edu