[tei-council] DRAFT: Backward Compatibility and the Maintenance of the Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines

[Syd Bauman]

I think David has done an excellent job with this task [TCW09], and
overall I quite like the result.


> I agree that a statement of principle like this should be agreed by
> the Council too.

Did you mean Board? While I have no objection to soliciting the
Board's opinion (or the membership's, for that matter), this seems to
me to be completely within the scope of the Council, and outside the
scope of the Board. I.e., it's the Council's decision, although
seeking outside advise is probably a good idea.


> I think the bit that bothers me a little is the notion of
> deprecation. Where, and how, would that be recorded?

I don't think such details need keep us from agreeing on the
principle of the matter.


> I am also a little chary, technically, of the idea of creating a
> new "thang" alongside the old deprecated one. If we change <p> in
> some way that is not backward compatible, we'd have to create
> <p-bis>, and deprecate use of <p>; which is surely not viable......

True, depreciation works better for things like <notesStmt> than <p>. 


> I think it needs ", wherever possible" inserted after "should" in
> the last line of para C in the 3rd section

I agree. (Where use of the word "possible" in documents like this
does not mean 'actually possible to do', but means 'possible to do
while adhering to the other principles in a reasonable way' or some
such. :-)