[tei-council] Conformance inconsistency

Conal Tuohy conal.tuohy at vuw.ac.nz
Thu Oct 25 19:11:53 EDT 2007


On Thu, 2007-10-25 at 18:33 -0400, Syd Bauman wrote:
> #CF, 23.3 "Conformance":
>    A document is also said to be TEI Conformant if it is a
>    well-formed XML document which can be transformed algorithmically
>    and automatically into a TEI Conformant document as defined above
>    without loss of information.
> 
> #CFNS, 23.3.4 "Use of the TEI Namespace":
>    A schema which introduces non-TEI elements or attributes within
>    the TEI namespace is also non-TEI Conformant;
> 
> 
> These conflict. If I want to add a global rendMe= attribute which
> combines both rend= and rendition= (say, uses the syntax "get(#id)"
> to do what rendition= does; anything else is rend=), it does not
> matter whether I call it rendMe=, wwp:rendMe=, or tei:rendMe= -- in
> all cases it is algorithmically transformable to a TEI Conformant
> document. 

I agree that the definition in 23.3 is a bit weak in that it appears to
allow documents which are forbidden by 23.3.4. But I think if you read
the first statement in a particular way, it makes sense, and that sense
could be clarified a bit. I think that it's implicit that a schema in
which namespaces are misused will not actually provide an algorithm with
sufficient information to make a conversion reliably, hence instances of
that schema will not be (reliably, in the general case) algorithmically
transformable.

e.g.
   A document is also said to be TEI Conformant if it is a
   well-formed XML document whose non-TEI features can be 
   unambiguously recognised, and the document transformed
algorithmically
   and automatically into a TEI Conformant document as defined above
   without loss of information.

... ack that's a bit wordy, but I think it's the resolution of the
contradiction:

For instance, assuming the added attribute is in a new namespace
(belonging to the schema's author), then the meaning of the attribute
(i.e. its mapping to regular Conformant TEI) can be clear and globally
unambiguous, and hence a hypothetical algorithm can make the conversion
safely and reliably. 

Whereas if the new attribute were not in a namespace, then after
interchange it might not be clear what the attribute used to mean
(because of its name not being globally unique). An algorithm coud not,
as a practical matter, distinguish the attribute rendMe which you had
added from a rendMe attribute which I had added, intending it to mean
something else altogether. Using the TEI namespace for the new custom
attribute has the same fault, of course, though it's even worse because
it purports to grant global uniqueness, without actually any authority
to do so.

Con


-- 
Conal Tuohy
New Zealand Electronic Text Centre
www.nzetc.org



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