[tei-council] rendition, rend, and style

Wed May 9 18:51:28 EDT 2007

Dear John (cc Council),

In David's Magical World of Descriptive Markup, markup is never 
procedural/presentational and output rendering is governed by mapping 
descriptive markup to rendering details in a stylesheet. If I want my 
code snippets output in a monospaced font, I tag them as <code> (or 
something similar) and in my stylesheet (not my document instance) I map 
the content of <code> elements to a CSS instruction to use that font (or 
FO or some other stylesheet-level specification). I never specify 
"monospaced font" as part of my markup of my born-electric source.

Similarly, I can't imagine specifying in my descriptive markup that an 
element should be rendered as "big" in my output document. I might 
specify that it was big in my source document (not the same thing, as 
we've noted), or I might specify that it is important or that it is a 
section heading, but if I want any of these three features to produce 
rendering as big (however I interpret that) in the output, it would be 
because "big in the source document" or "important" or "section heading" 
was mapped to "render this in big type" in the stylesheet.

I have no problem with mapping of @rend="big" to a font specification in 
a <rendition> element when this is part of a description of the source 
document. My only objection is to specifying output rendering in the 
document instance.

For what it's worth ...

Best,

David

John A. Walsh wrote:
> David,
>
> I agree about the descriptive vs. presentational issue...but the 
> stylesheets you mention often need triggers in the TEI source, and 
> they @rend attribute is often the trigger one uses.  Also, since we 
> have an @rend attribute, it would seem useful to provide a standard 
> mechanism for documenting how that attribute is used and defining the 
> meaning of its content. @rend="big" could mean lots of things, but if 
> it points to <rendition xml:id="big">font-family: Granjon; font-size: 
> 16pt; font-weight: bold</rendition>, then one has a clear idea of what 
> @rend="big" means, and this rendition definition may well refer to the 
> source text, not any output format.  A stylesheet can still take the 
> "big" trigger and do something else with it.  The Guidelines do 
> already state that the content of rendition may be "expressed in 
> running prose, or in some more formal language such as CSS."
>
> John
> -- 
> | John A. Walsh
> | Assistant Professor, School of Library and Information Science
> | Indiana University, 1320 East Tenth Street, Bloomington, IN 47405
> | www: <http://www.slis.indiana.edu/faculty/jawalsh/>
> | Voice:812-856-0707 Fax:812-856-2062 <mailto:jawalsh at indiana.edu>
>
>
> On May 9, 2007, at 8:01 AM, David J Birnbaum wrote:
>
>> Dear John,
>>
>> Option C, please. XML isn't Microsoft Word and TEI markup should be 
>> descriptive, rather than presentational. The ability to specify 
>> output rendering is often very important to projects, but the place 
>> to declare it is the stylesheet, not the document instance.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> David
>>
>> John A. Walsh wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I'm supposed to write up my thoughts on proposed changes to 
>>> <rendition> and @rend, including the possible addition of an @style 
>>> attribute.
>>>
>>> The current P5 guidelines state that @rend "indicates how the 
>>> element in question was rendered or presented in the source text."  
>>> But my sense is that in practice @rend is used both to indicate how 
>>> an element was rendered in the source text and/or how it should be 
>>> rendered in a display environment such as a Web browser or printed 
>>> output.
>>>
>>> The addition of @style could be used to distinguish between 
>>> rendering in the source text (@rend) and rendering in an output 
>>> format (@style). *OR* the addition of @style could be used to 
>>> provided the @class/@style functionality of HTML.  @rend (like 
>>> @class) could refer to predefined style classes, which could be 
>>> defined in the <rendition> element of the TEI Header.  @style could 
>>> be used to embed style information directly in an element.
>>>
>>> If we simply want to distinguish between source rendering and output 
>>> rendering with the addition of an @style attribute, then my task is 
>>> easy.
>>>
>>> If on the other hand we want to provide the @class/@style 
>>> functionality of HTML, the task is more difficult and would involve 
>>> prescribing or recommending practice that is not common at the 
>>> moment, and would also likely involve changes to the <rendition> 
>>> element and perhaps a new element in <encodingDesc> where folks 
>>> could explain their implementation. For instance, users may define 
>>> their styles using CSS, XSL-FO, rendition ladders, or some other 
>>> mechanism, and this will need to be explained in <encodingDesc>.
>>>
>>> I believe we touched on all these various distinctions in Berlin, so 
>>> I would like members of the council to weigh in on which way to go 
>>> with this.  Please select A. or B. (or a new letter and proposal of 
>>> your own invention):
>>>
>>> A. @rend/@style should distinguish between source rendering and 
>>> output rendering.
>>>
>>> B. @rend/@style should distinguish between HTML-like @class 
>>> functionality and HTML-like @style functionality.
>>>
>>> Incidentally, if we go with B. and style classes are defined in 
>>> <rendition> elements of the TEI Header, then we could add an 
>>> attribute to <rendition> that indicates whether the "target" of this 
>>> rendition "class" is the source text or the output format.  The 
>>> @style attribute would remain ambiguous in terms of source/output, 
>>> but this ambiguity could be addressed and clarified in the 
>>> <encodingDesc>.
>>>
>>> Once I hear back from others on the Council, I'll proceed with a 
>>> more formal document on this topic.
>>>
>>> John
>>> --| John A. Walsh
>>> | Assistant Professor, School of Library and Information Science
>>> | Indiana University, 1320 East Tenth Street, Bloomington, IN 47405
>>> | www: <http://www.slis.indiana.edu/faculty/jawalsh/>
>>> | Voice:812-856-0707 Fax:812-856-2062 <mailto:jawalsh at indiana.edu>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> tei-council mailing list
>>> tei-council at lists.village.Virginia.EDU
>>> http://lists.village.Virginia.EDU/mailman/listinfo/tei-council
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> tei-council mailing list
> tei-council at lists.village.Virginia.EDU
> http://lists.village.Virginia.EDU/mailman/listinfo/tei-council