[tei-council] egXML and namespaces in TEI

[Conal Tuohy]

Can anyone explain the rationale for the guideline on namespaces in
<egXML>? I am quite confused as to how (or why) it works. Frankly, it
seems wrong to me, but I'm not sure, since I don't grasp its purpose.

http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/html/ref-egXML.html

"The element's contents should be marked as belonging to the namespace
http://www.tei-c.org/ns/Examples if they are to be validated against the
TEI scheme; if the content is well-formed XML from some other namespace,
it must be enclosed in a CDATA marked section. If the content is not
well-formed XML, the more general <eg> element should be used in
preference."

How does the use of the http://www.tei-c.org/ns/Examples namespace help
with validation? It seems odd to me to define another namespace (no pun
intended), because the element names in that namespace are (I assume)
the same as those defined in the namespace http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0/

Also, why must non-TEI-namespaced examples be quoted in a CDATA section?


I note also that the source ODD files have the egXML elements in the
example namespace, although the note above says to put the egXML
element's CONTENTS in that namespace. For example, if you look at the
definition of catDesc: 
http://tei.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/*checkout*/tei/trunk/P5/Source/Spe
cs/catDesc.xml
The parent exemplum element is supposed to contain an element called
egXML in the TEI namespace, but instead it contains an element called
egXML in the "TEI example" namespace. I am pretty sure this is an error.

One final thing: the "TEI example" namespace URL
http://www.tei-c.org/ns/Examples produces a 404. It would be nice to
have a document there, perhaps with a link to the documentation for
egXML.

Cheers

Con