[tei-council] the "key" attribute
Sebastian Rahtz
sebastian.rahtz at oucs.ox.ac.uk
Sun May 20 16:00:59 EDT 2007
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
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