[tei-council] solving the Birnbaum Biznai

[M. J. Driscoll]

For what it's worth, I was and am persuaded by the arguments in favour of 
implementing choice 2 below. Unfortunately I lack the technical knowledge 
necessary to understand how serious the "serious implications" Sebastian 
mentions are, but if solutions can be found in the course of a (possibly 
incoherent) discussion at an airport I'd be tempted to say, let's go for it.

MJD (suffering serious symptoms of sushi withdrawal)


> Two issues have been raised in regard to this, and we need to take
> a strategic decision.
> 
> *Firstly*, do we want to change the basic idea of what a model class is,
> to allow
> for the notion that it may encompass such things as a,b,c  or a?,b?,c?
> or a*,b*,c*
> or a+,b+,c+ as well as the current a|b|c? If we accept the idea, it
> allows us
> to deal with the requests of msdescription using the class system. If we
> do not
> allow it, we must find another way.
> 
> So if we accept that msdesc is currently broke, we have a choice:
> 
>  1) uses classes, and introduce very relaxed content models which permit
>       elements to repeat in unwanted ways
>  2) use classes, with the proposed new meaning of what a "class" is
>  3) introduce and implement module dependencies, and accept that
>      it will be harder to guarantee schemas which don't have dangling links
> 
> Each of these routes is possible. The simplest is 1), which requires no
> new work.  I have implemented 2), but only partly (see below). For 3),
> no work has been done, but it is not that hard to make Roma follow
> "suggests"
> links and tick an extra box by default. However, it will require serious
> work to look at guarenteed removal of dangling links.
> 
> Personally, I think that route 2) is most in line with where the TEI
> ODD system has been going. But YMMV.
> 
> *Secondly*, if we do take route 2), it has serious implications
> for the non-ODD extension mechanism, ie using schema/dtd
> module fragments and combining them in a DTD subset or
> hand-written RelaxNG schema. Lou and I had a long (and probably
> incoherent) discussion about this at Kansai airport and I think
> we came up with solutions. But it raised the question as to
> whether we definely want to carry on with this whole
> method of working.
> 
> Anyone got thoughts in this?
> 
> -- 
> Sebastian Rahtz      
> 
> Information Manager, Oxford University Computing Services
> 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431
> 
> OSS Watch: JISC Open Source Advisory Service
> http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk
> 
> _______________________________________________
> tei-council mailing list
> tei-council at lists.village.Virginia.EDU
> http://lists.village.Virginia.EDU/mailman/listinfo/tei-council