[tei-council] solving unnumbered divs (bis)

[James Cummings]

David J Birnbaum wrote:
> I'd like to suggest that TEI Council not be excessively shy about 
> expressing a strong opinion (when we can more or less agree on one) 
> about best practice, and about steering the Guidelines in that 
> direction. Users who want to do something differently have the ability 
> to customize, so nobody is suggesting that deviating from out-of-the-box 
> TEI.

Yes, and this reminds me that I have yet to finish my straw-man rewrite of the 
Conformance chapter.  Mea Culpa.  I will indeed do so, but it got delayed by the 
topic re-erupting on TEI-L.  I'll try to take the issues mentioned there into 
consideration when doing so.  Also, I'll not be able to participate in the 
upcoming council teleconference, my apologies.

Although I'm much more of a <div> or if necessary <div1> kind of person than a 
<div0>, I am happy to compromise and support Sebastian's proposal of starting at 
<div0> by default and needing a (quite easy) customisation to change that if 
<div1> is preferred.

> In arguing that we should not be excessively flexible I certainly don't 
> mean to suggest that we should be capriciously dictatorial. Rather, I 
> think "some people want to do it this way" is an argument that should be 
> treated with respect, but it is not something that puts an end to all 
> argument.

Others' comments on whether switching to <div0> default start for those using 
numbered divs would seriously inconvenience the TEI community, leads me to a 
suggestion.  How about I undertake a survey (something like surveymonkey) on 
behalf of the TEI which is then publicised on TEI-L to gauge the community's 
strength of feeling on this issue.  Feel free to suggest questions to ask.  If 
the council decides this is a good idea, I'll happily do so within the next month.

-James

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