[tei-council] Mode attribute for <classes>

[Laurent Romary]

OK. Making the thing nicer is not worth making Seb loose a whole  
week. Just Imagine I had said nothing...

Le 3 sept. 07 à 17:06, Sebastian Rahtz a écrit :

> Laurent Romary wrote:
>> My point was to have the same mechanism for modifying class  
>> relationships as we have for other aspects of an elementSpec.
>> In the current version, the only way to change the classes  
>> attached to an element is to make a complete <classes> declaration  
>> with all new and old classes.
> yes, because it is not identifiable. <classes> is a black box like  
> <desc>, you either take
> it away or replace it. Within <classes>, <memberOf> is not  
> identifiable either, ie
> it has no @ident.
>> Beyond the fact that it is not coherent with the rest of the  
>> specification mechanisms
> technically, it is :-}
>> it prevents anyone to know what is actually deleted or added from  
>> the initial declaration. I would thus suggest to add a mode  
>> attribute both for <classes> and <memberOf>, with the following  
>> meaning:
>> - <classes mode="change"> means look inside at he mode attributes  
>> of the embedded <memberOf> (see below).
>> - <classes mode="delete"> means all <memberOf> declarations have  
>> to be removed from the existing element specification
>> - <classes mode="add"> means all <memberOf> declarations should be  
>> added to the existing element specification
>>
> I _could_ do that, but it would conflict the semantics of @mode  
> elsewhere
>> - <memberOf mode="add"> means the relation should be added to the  
>> existing element specification
>> - <memberOf mode="delete"> means the relation should be deleted  
>> from the existing element specification
> ditto.
>>
>> This specification allows the same thing to be expressed in two  
>> different ways, for instance an addition and a deletion could be  
>> either expressed as
>>                 <elementSpec>
>>                     <classes mode="change">
>>                         <memberOf mode="del" key="X"/>
>>                         <memberOf mode="add" key="Y"/>
>>                     </classes>
>>                 </elementSpec>
>> or
>>
>>                 <elementSpec>
>>                     <classes mode="del">
>>                         <memberOf  key="X"/>
>>                     </classes>
>>                     <classes mode="add">
>>                         <memberOf key="Y"/>
>>                     </classes>
>>                 </elementSpec>
>
> <classes> cannot appear twice, I think.
>
> I am extraordinarily reluctant to get into implementing this
> proposal, because it would lose a week of my life. But I will,
> of course, if everyone says it is needed, and are willing to accept
> the contradictions.
>
> -- 
> Sebastian Rahtz      Information Manager, Oxford University  
> Computing Services
> 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431