[tei-council] Conformance .... the continuing saga

[Lou Burnard]

Sebastian's now gone on holiday, but that hasn't stopped James and me 
from continuing to argue about conformance!

How do other Council Members feel about this?


LB >>> You're making the same mistake I was: conflating "support for 
DTDs" and
>>> "support for parameterized DTDs". We certainly have to go on supporting
>>> DTDs, but the record isn't clear as to whether we agreed to pull the rug
>>> out from under "parameterized DTDs". As in the SG chapter, we have to
>>> decide whether to remove that facility or complement it with some
>>> discussion of the RelaxNG alternative way.

JC >> If Parameterised DTDs are only being used for things which are now
>> done in
>> ODD, then, cognate with not allowing people to just stitch together
>> RelaxNG
>> schemas and be conformant, I don't think we necessarily should be
>> supporting/mentioning/recommending parameterised DTDs.  I'm willing to be
>> convinced that we should, but I don't understand the argument for
>> continuing in support of them.

LB > We need a more open discussion about ways of customizing the TEI.
> Parameterised DTD fragments, knitting together RelaxNG fragments, and
> using ODD are three varyingly plausible ways of achieving the same goal.
> We are near to a consensus on which is regarded as "TEI conformant" (the
> last); but we haven't begun the debate as to whether or not we support
> the other two as well.

Should we actively support non-Conformant methods of doing things, or
simply have a short notice that there are other ways to do it with some
descriptions?

> The simplest argument in favour is
> 
> (a) we are currently generating and distributing them
Not a good enough reason to keep doing so
> (b) we haven't told anyone we intend to stop doing so
Political, but again, P5 is such a big change
> (c) people e.g. wendell might want to use them
Those who don't care about Conformance?  And nothing to stop them using
that locally, but producing versions that do the same thing in an ODD.
> (d) it's (probably) less work to add some stuff about relaxng than to
> completely remove all the stuff about DTDs
I can't really judge that.
> Maybe we should move this discussion to the council list?

Yes, certainly. :-)