[tei-council] solving the Birnbaum Biznai

[Sebastian Rahtz]

Syd Bauman wrote:
> On the other side are the forces, who include both me and David
> Birnbaum, I believe, who believe that the constraints the Guidelines
> describe are paramount
I believe in that too :-}

>>  2) use classes, with the proposed new meaning of what a "class" is
>>     
>
> With some caveats that Sebastian already knows of (if he understood
> my possibly inchorent mail :-), I think this is a Good Thing to Do
> even though it does not, on its own, handle <msIdentifier>.
>   
what aspect of <msIdentifier> is not handled?
>>  3) introduce and implement module dependencies, and accept that it
>>     will be harder to guarantee schemas which don't have dangling
>>     links
>>     
>
> I must admit I don't understand the "harder" part here
If you add a dependency in "msdesc" on "namesdates",
but the user then deletes <settlement> from namesdates,
you are no better off than you are now. Module
dependency is a crude tool. That's the main reason
I don't  want to use it.

>  but I
> personally think implementing module dependencies in the ODD system
> is a good idea even if we (the TEI) choose not to use it. Any one of
> the hundreds of other XML languages that will be expressing
> themselves using our ODD system any day now may appreciate this
> capability.  :-)
>   
sure. if you define what the precise behaviour of module dependency
is.
>
> Sebastian has not mentioned another solution:
>
> 4) Not fix the "problem", but rather document it: say "yes, in order
>    to use module A you also need to load module Y" 
that's module dependency...
> While I am not super fond of (4), it is *much* more acceptable than
> (1).
>   
I don't disagree with that choice. But it leaves the TEI
making invalid schemas rather easily, as James found.
> Am I correct that what you intend here is that when a module M is
> declared its <moduleSpec> would have a suggests= attribute which
> lists 0 or more other modules. Roma would then tick off the check
> boxes for the other modules whenever M was selected? This 
yes
> is halfway
> between (3) true syntactic dependency (you get an error if you select
> M without one of its dependencies) and (4) just document it, and I
> think may be a very good way to go.
>   
surely, I can do that. its just "people who bought this module
also bought module".
>
>   of the issue. But supporting DTD extesions seems all but silly.)
>
>   
I think I'd agree; but would note that supporting it
there is probably not much more work than in schema.

-- 
Sebastian Rahtz      

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