[tei-council] image encoding comments

[James Cummings]

Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> Amit Kumar wrote:
>> IMHO  tei:graphic is redundant, but I would let learned  in the group
>> come to a judgement.
>>   
> there is an awful lot of redundancy in the TEI. Yes, <tei:graphic> is
> probably
> syntactic sugar for <svg><image/></svg>, but so is <html:a> or even
> <html:object>, no? sometimes one wants simpler notations.
> 
> My problem with SVG is that once you allow the SVG stuff in,
> you allow it all in, and that has problems for implementation.
> Since most people don't have SVG enabled in their browser,
> you have to dumb down to plain (X)HTML, which is hard
> if people hurl in huge gobs of complex SVG.
> 
> I know SVG is cute, but it still, after all these years,
> seems to be a very minority subject.

On a related issue, I believe there has been talk by some of requesting
replacing tei:graphic with SVG as the default recommendation.  I would like to
state for the record that I'm wholeheartedly against this.

However, it isn't for any failing in SVG (though its adoption is slower than I'd
like), that I'm against it.  Instead it is the idea of introducing yet another
namespace into TEI at all.  I love that with P5 we *can* include other
namespaces.  Currently we use the TEI namespace, the TEI Examples namespace, the
XML namespace and in our ODDs the RelaxNG namespace.  But I think we should try
to keep it only to this if possible.

However, I would be strongly in favour of the Guidelines discussing in detail
how to add in elements from other namespaces and giving detailed examples.
During the chapter discussing graphics it might be good to have a discussion and
detailed example of adding SVG.  There are many other candidates, I'm sure.  I
have no problem with us recommending the use of other embedded standards as part
of the customisation process.  But I think this should be left as customisations.

I return you to your regularly scheduled programming,
-James

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