[tei-council] Possibilities for new file names.

[James Cummings]

David J Birnbaum wrote:
> Dear James (cc Council),
> 
> Thank you for proposing new short names. I don't much care what the
> specific names are, but I think something more mnemonic than an
> inscrutible two letters will be very useful to new Council members and
> to plain ol' TEI users.

This was I believe was the initial reason for proposing they be changed.

I agree with Dot that we have much more important things to thing about (like
the PB stuff and backward compatibility).  But, if we were to think of criteria
I would think that the names would have to:

a) Be able to work in an internationalised context
b) Be mnemonic or at least instantly recognisable as to which chapter they referred
c) Not be overly long, so they work as part of URLs

To answer a) I think they need to have some unchanging uninternationalised
portion.  I had left the two-letter codes in my first suggestion specifically
for this reason.  It might be better, if and only if the chapter divisions are
going to remain generally stable, to use the chapter number instead.

So instead of:

HD.xml -> HD-TEI_Header.xml

we might use something like:

HD.xml -> 05-TEI_Header.xml

But I think it would be up to the editors to decide whether the current chapter
divisions are going to be stable enough for that for the foreseeable future.  If
they are, I might prefer this.

With c) there are some problematic chapters where you can't just choose one
word.... what about Linking, Segmentation, and Alignment, for example?

-James

-- 
Dr James Cummings, Oxford Text Archive, University of Oxford
James dot Cummings at oucs dot ox dot ac dot uk