[tei-council] Conformance draft: namespace purity

[Lou Burnard]

Over the last week, Dan, Dot, Arianna, Conal, Sebastian and I have all 
expressed support for James's proposal that (inter alia) conformance in 
a TEI document implies that the TEI namespace remains unpolluted by 
user-defined elements.

Does any of those who have remained silent on the topic wish to speak up 
before we move on to the next drafting phase of this document, or can I 
assume that the argument in favour of TEI purity is carried?  Re-reading 
the thread again, there does seem to be a strong consensus, but I am 
also aware that not everyone is sure about how far this extends.

Personally, I would like to see a bit more text at the start of this 
chapter explaining what conformance is for and what it means. This ought 
to explain the distinction between formal validation (against a specific 
schema) and usage of a namespace, and what each buys you in terms of 
interoperability.  It should make clear the reasoning behind insisting 
that elements which are not defined by the TEI (i.e. not in the 
Guidelines) cannot be in the TEI namespace. And of course it should make 
clear what this means in practice for TEI-schema-developers.

I have a couple of other points about the draft, which I will make in 
separate notes.