[tei-council] the "key" attribute

[Sebastian Rahtz]

I have raised this before, but it did not not stimulate any response, so
I am bringing it up again, with the reiteration that it a _mess_.

The key attribute is used in two situations:

 1. on elements  moduleRef, memberOf and specDesc to point to objects in 
the TEI universe
which are identifiable by having @ident. It's like the old ID/IDREF pairing.

 2. on elements like persName (all the things to do with naming people 
and places)
to point to the canonical object. Unfortunately, our examples use it in 
two different
ways
  2a. as a URI pointer eg <country key="#FR"/>
  2b as a database lookup somewhere eg  <name type="person" key="ThorJon08">

so that's three distinct data types used on one attribute,
differering in our examples even on the same element!

What are the choices?

 1. shrug our shoulders and say "bof, compared to the loss of Mourinho's 
dog it ees a nothing".

 2. regularize all uses of @key to be URIs (screws up <memberOf> royally)
 
 3. regularize all uses of @key to be database pointers, undefined 
(loses chance to use external URLs)

 4. replace @key with @target  in all the naming contexts

 5a. allow both @key and @target on all naming objects (5b. making them
 mutually exclusive)

I can live with 4, 5a or 5b. What say the rest of you?

I think it is very important that we decide this before the meeting at 
month's
end to finish places, as it is intimately caught up with all that 
persons/places stuff.

-- 
Sebastian Rahtz      

Information Manager, Oxford University Computing Services
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431