[tei-council] Witness proposal

[James Cummings]

Lou Burnard wrote:
> Fortunately, he's a persevering kind of chap, and I have now recovered
> the draft and placed it somewhere you can see it, viz:
> 
> http://www.tei-c.org/Drafts/witnessPart/proposal-witness.xml
> 
> It's in French, so I will summarize briefly the proposal here (I will
> also translate the document fully if so requested)

While I'm able to get the general sense from the document, I'm sure a
translation would help me as well, so I'd second Dot's request.

> * create a new class called model.witnessPart. which is a subclass of
> model.phrasel; use this class in the content model of <witness>
> * add to this class a number of elements currently specific to
> msDescription, specifically:
>   origDate, material, physDesc, seal, dimensions,
> filiation,msIdentifier, msContents, rubric;

Why can't the witness instead link to an msDescription?

> * re-introduce the "sigil" attribute as a new <sigil> element

If I'm understanding the French, the complaint is that the suggested use of
xml:id is to constricting since people may wish to use existing sigla well-known
in the community, but that <ident> simultaneously is too vague and generic but
also won't allow some useful elements.  Am I understanding that correctly?  I
still think I'd favour a linking mechanism from witness to msIdentifier if
someone needs a more detailed identification.  Maybe I'm misunderstanding the
proposal though.


> * add a "class" attribute to <witness>

I was unable to get up the "Appendix A Liste des éléments de la classe
witnessPart", but if I'm understanding the prose description correctly, this
attribute would be used to indicate a taxonomy used to classify that witness.
Which again seems like something which should be off in msDescription

I'm probably just mistranslating things though, so I look forward to Lou's
translation which I know is in hand.

-James

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