[tei-council] on conformance document

[Syd Bauman]

> >                     TEI conformance is not about making interchange a
> >                     trivial activity. TEI conformance is about making
> >                     what you've done explicit.
> is this a quote? or a manifesto summary?

Note a quotation.


> I wonder if there are 3 ways to judge a project which claims to be
> doing the TEI:

Sebastian, have you read the chapter on conformance about which we're
speaking (28)?

>  a) is it conformant, in the loosest sense, ie does it use the TEI
>  as is, or with the proper extension mechanism

TEI local processing format, perhaps? (28.1.2)

>  b) is it interchangeable, ie does it use the TEI in ways which
>  make it technically possible to exchange documents with
>  others and use common tools

TEI interchange format, perhaps? (28.1.3)

>  c) is it semantically conformant, ie does it use the TEI tags in
>  the way they were intended

TEI recommended practice, perhaps? (28.1.5)


> you may well be right. but in that case I think you are making
> "conformance" such a loose term that it loses any power.

An exageration for sure, but precisely the desired outcome.


> > A TEI encoding that is closer to vanilla (e.g., a strict subset of
> > tei_all, a 1 on Sebastian's scale) is not ex facie "better" TEI than a
> > TEI encoding that is more drastically customized. 

> well, that depends on the customization. in some cases I'd argue
> that it _is_ better

Right! It depends on the customization. It's not better *because* it
is a strict subset. One can well imagine customizations that are
strict subsets that are stupid, and customizations that are unclean
that are excellent. (And vice-versa.)


> I am not sure I agree. Can you give some (imaginary) concrete
> examples in which someone does tag abuse because they are scared of
> customization?

Do you read TEI-L? There are at least dozens, if not hundreds, of
projects in the world using TEI Lite (P4) and committing various
levels of tag abuse because they are scared of extension.


> we _could_ take that line, yes. but I think it would do the world a
> disservice to simply wimp out of stability for the TEI ...

I think history tells us it does the world a great service, not a
disservice.