[tei-council] the "key" attribute

Arianna Ciula arianna.ciula at kcl.ac.uk
Wed May 23 09:58:23 EDT 2007


I think this is quite a complex issue to tackle since the use of 
implicit @key to refer to something else implies some sort of 
user-defined method to transform it into a real reference but at the 
same time requires the guidelines to be more explicit in suggested 
practices (e.g. use the TEI header, store your more explicit paths 
somewhere, create a TEI authority list of people/places).

In general I think I agree with the proposal

Lou Burnard wrote:
> to reserve @key, with datatype 
> data.key, for that latter usage.

i.e. for references that don't have necessarily the format of a 
pointer....but more to be done on the names and dates chapter to show 
how @key can be REALLY used.

Arianna

> 
> 
> 
> Conal Tuohy wrote:
>> 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>
>>
>>
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>>
>>   
> 
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-- 
Dr Arianna Ciula
Research Associate
Centre for Computing in the Humanities
King's College London
Strand
London WC2R 2LS (UK)
Tel: +44 (0)20 78481945
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/cch



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