Fwd: [tei-council] DRAFT Agenda for the TEI Council teleconference on June 15, 2007 at 1200 UTC

[James Cummings]

I know this isn't the issue under consideration, but I've always had a
problem with @rend being in the att.global class myself.

@rend is defined as indicating "how the element in question was rendered or
presented in the source text."  While this makes sense to me for every
element underneath <gi>text</gi> in the hierarchy, it still bothers me in
the header.

According to the Guidelines as they stand <revisionDesc rend="italics">
does not say the revisionDesc should be printed out in italics, but that it
was in italics in the original.  This makes no sense to me because
revisionDesc summarizes the change history for the electronic file and is
not present in the source.  Similarly, what does <fileDesc rend="blue">,
<encodingDesc rend="RedSquiggly"> or <availability rend="quantum"> really
mean if these elements did not appear in the source text?

If TEI says nothing about output rendition (which is, I think, a strength
rather than a failing), then wouldn't it make sense for @rend to only be
allowed on elements which in one way or another reflect the source text,
rather than provide information about the electronic text.  (Ignoring, for
the moment theoretical questions of transcriptions from images of
syntax-highlighted TEI XML.)

I have yet to be convinced of its utility on such elements if the
definition remains,as I think it should, solely to do the source document
for the TEI encoded version.

-James

Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> so we all agree that the TEI says nothing about output rendition? should we
> concretely suggest using html:class / html:style?
> 
> I find @rend and @rendref rather hard to swallow.  I know the
> TEI is famously indecisive, but this seems going too far.  I suppose
> if it was a choice of @rend *or* @rendRef it would be slightly nicer.
> 
> What scares me is adding a new attribute to att.global, because
> it becomes so visible to everyone. What you _could_ have is
> @rendRef supplied by an optional module, but then what else
> would that contain?
> 


-- 
Dr James Cummings, Oxford Text Archive, University of Oxford
James dot Cummings at oucs dot ox dot ac dot uk