[tei-council] TEI Conformance

[Dan O'Donnell]

On Mon, 2006-27-11 at 16:11 +0000, James Cummings wrote:

Picking up on the bit I've quoted from Conal here, and the observation
you make about both the reputational issues and the lack of any real
benefit from a virtual virtual space at tei-c.org, could we mandate as a
conformance demand that extensions must be placed in a namespace that
begins tei. (too bad there's not a TLD .tei)

The point for doing this would be to impress upon people that they are
making claims about the "tei-ness" of their xml in this space (and hence
not for any arbitrary element): i.e. that the tei.xxx.tld namespace
should only contain elements that have been added, extended or changed
using an approved method.

I wonder if this isn't a happy medium between the two positions of "any
arbitrary space" and "we'll supply you with a virtual virtual space"? I
think if we say "use tei-c.org" but we aren't actually going to host
anything there would be rapidly disregarded. I think asking "begin a TEI
addition namespace with tei." is probably askable and would be carried
out.

-dan


> >> Finally, can I ask: what's the actual benefit of defining a special
> >> "extension" namespace? It's not like by providing a "TEI Extension"
> >> namespace we would save anyone significant work since literally ALL they
> >> have to do is make up a unique URI for their namespace.
> 
> 
> I've been thinking about Daniel and Conal's comments, and must say that I too
> find Conal's argument that we should strive to avoid element name collision by
> not having a single TEI Extensions namespace entirely convincing.
> 
> Part of the reason though for suggesting a TEI Extensions namespace is that
> these are extensions to the TEI rather than anything else.  That is, I want them
> clearly demarcated that these are things the person has added to the TEI, and
> that the TEI is the system of assumptions and semantics that has inspired these
> elements.  That they are, indeed, TEI-inspired, rather than coming out of
> another tradition (say docbook), etc.
> 
> What does council think of proposing that new additions to the TEI which are not
> renaming subsets are *recommended* to be in a namespace following certain
> conventions.  Particularly a namespace like:
> 
> http://www.tei-c.org/ns/ext/NameOfProjectHere
> 
> As everyone knows the namespace URI doesn't need to (indeed some say shouldn't)
> resolve to anything.  This would have the in-built reminder that these are
> extensions to the TEI, rather than extensions just generally. My intention here
> being that we should be reinforcing the prominence of the TEI whenever possible.
> 
> I do, however, foresee at least two significant comments on this:
> 
> 1) Does this bring the TEI into disrepute if I make some really *stupid*
> additions, and they are in a namespace which is associated with the TEI
> Consortium?  Does it look like we are somehow approving of these extensions?
> Obviously, we'd have to make it clear that we were in no way responsible for
> their content.  Although I doubt the porn industry uses TEI (do, please, prove
> me wrong!), I'd hate to see a namespace used that was
> http://www.tei-c.org/ns/ext/SetOfRudeWordsHere
> 
> 2) If this is made into a recommendation, then why not make it a 'member
> benefit' that I've heard so much about.  I.e. members of a certain level are
> allowed to do this, and others are forbidden. Of course, then, since there is no
> control over this (even with interchange), there is really no way to regulate
> that.  (so nothing to stop me putting my namespace in http://www.w3.org/james/
> or anywhere else... but of course not really much benefit of doing so...unless I
> want to come up with fake recommendations?!)
> 
> If you feel these (and other problems) are significant enough not to recommend
> this, then let me know and instead I'll recommend that they just choose their
> own URI.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> -James
> 
-- 
Daniel Paul O'Donnell, PhD
Chair, Text Encoding Initiative <http://www.tei-c.org/>
Director, Digital Medievalist Project <http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/>
Associate Professor and Chair of English
University of Lethbridge
Lethbridge AB T1K 3M4
Vox: +1 403 329 2378
Fax: +1 403 382-7191
Homepage: http://people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odonnell/