[tei-council] TEI Numbered Divs Survey: The Results.
Sebastian Rahtz
sebastian.rahtz at oucs.ox.ac.uk
Sat Feb 10 12:37:59 EST 2007
Lou Burnard wrote:
>
> However, I feel the need for some reassurance about the way it's
> proposed to make all these additional model classes. Two reasons have
> been advanced:
>
> a. without them, it is hard or impossible to define a robust content
> model for body etc.
> b. with them, users can use more "natural" like element names
> ("chapter" "section" etc.)
>
> Reason (a) looks plausible -- "robust" here means that you can delete
> things from a schema without generating ambiguity, and this will at a
> stroke reduce the number of white hairs generated when trying to make
> sense of the existing content models
want to bet? the content model for body remains quite complex....
>
> Reason (b) I like less. Why do we have <div>s at all if we are going
> to do this? It is contrary to the original design decision, which
> was to apply Occam's razor to this problem (you say "section" and I
> say "part" -- let's call the whole thing "div").
> Maybe I'm just worried about all the rewriting that will have to be
> done if we take this proposal seriously.
The ability to name "div1" to "chapter" is already there, its just
<altIdent>
what we now have is the ability to add "<foo>" _alongside_ "<div1>" so that
it behaves in the same manner. Good or bad? who knows. Its a natural fallout
from using classes.
I don't think any serious rewriting is needed by a decision to remove
"div0"; applying
the class struggle to divN does not affect the day to day prose of the
guidelines.
We may note that it will now be much easier to remove div4, div5, div6
and div7.
Anyway, the classification of the div elements is an obvious completion
of the
work started in 2005, and I don't see a real reason to reopen that subject.
--
Sebastian Rahtz
Information Manager, Oxford University Computing Services
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431
OSS Watch: JISC Open Source Advisory Service
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk
More information about the tei-council
mailing list