[tei-council] policy tested (was "Re: [TEI-L] <measureGrp> and <text>")

[Christian Wittern]

Lou Burnard wrote:
> This posting demonstrates rather well the slipperiness of the concept of 
> "corrigible error". We can all agree that a content model of 
> model.measureLike or <text> is plainly wrong for this element. I can 
> certainly fess up to the fact that I wrote  "<text>" when I should have 
> written "text".  So on the face of it the obvious correction is to 
> replace <rng:ref name="text"> with <rng:text> since that's what I 
> intended: just as if I had written "txet" instead of "text".
>
> However, there are at least three other and arguably better ways of 
> correcting this error:
> (a) one should be consistent with other uses of <rng:text> and  change 
> the content model to reference macro.xtext
> (b) one should be consistent with other uses of the element name suffix 
> "Grp" and disallow "text" completely
> (c) one should rename the element to something else and allow text (or 
> macro.xtext)
>
> Given such shifting sands (and I haven't even started on the question of 
> whether the attribute classes are right) I think the "treat it as a 
> typo" solution is probably the safest course, even though it does break 
> the letter of the Birnbaum law about not making changes in the schema.
>
>   
I do not think that fixing the typo does break the rules we set 
ourselves for maintenance (where is this document on the new website?  I 
can't find it -- I think it was TCW09).  However as you say, we should 
not use this as an opportunity to fix more than the typo.  So I think a) 
is the way to go.

Bes,t

Christian

-- 

 Christian Wittern 
 Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University
 47 Higashiogura-cho, Kitashirakawa, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8265, JAPAN