[tei-council] on conformance document

[Sebastian Rahtz]

Syd Bauman wrote:
>>  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)
>   
no, sorry. I think you're conflatin the formats
defined in 28.1.n with mine in ways in which don't
work. Those cover all sorts of issues which
have now gone away, and don't cover some
of the things we now discuss.
>>  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)
>   
this is closer.
> 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.)
>   
hmm. confusion here between "better" in
the sense "more useful
to the rest of the world" and "excellent"
in the sense "a damn find bit of encoding design
in the spirit of the TEI, which might be usefully
folded into the Guidelines"

>> 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. 
>   
hmm. the history has not been written yet,
so that's a bold claim. My counter claim is
that the TEI has achieved very limited
market penetration, because it is so
forgiving and malleable. I cite in my defence
the fact that the TEI Consortium can scrape
together a mere 140 examples of its use
after 15 years of work....

-- 
Sebastian Rahtz      

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