[tei-council] the "key" attribute

[Conal Tuohy]

On Tue, 2007-05-22 at 14:14 +0100, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> Matthew James Driscoll wrote:
> > It would be helpful if I had a clearer idea of the difference between key,
> > ana and target (and ref), all of which seem to do similar, but subtly
> > different, things. It's the "subtly different" bit that gets me.
> >
> > key "provides a means of locating a full definition for the entity being
> > named such as a database record key or a URI" ]
> >   
> no, scrub that "or a URI" bit. It can't work.

Can you explain why? Do you mean because of your earlier point that
there's no failsafe way to determine whether a @key is intended to
represent a db record key on the one hand, or a URI on the other?

I have to say I am very much a fan of @key as a URI (and of URIs as a
preferred reference mechanism is general). 

If the problem with "or a URI" is as I supposed, another approach would
be to require that @key always contains a URI, and recommend to encoders
who wish to encode a locally-defined database record key that they
encode the record key, slightly more verbosely, in some kind of URI
syntax.

<!-- not a URI -->
<name key="name-121558">Conal</name>

The @key above is actually a key in a database here at work. There are
several usable http URLs I could construct from it, e.g.:

<name
key="http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/name-121558.html">Conal</name>

Without using http or another resolution protocol, the key could still
be encoded in URI syntax using the "tag" URI scheme:

<!-- a URI -->
<name key="tag:nzetc.org/2007,name-121558">Conal</name>