[tei-council] dim

[Daniel Paul O'Donnell]

I think the relevant bit is this:
> The pattern attribute used in these and other examples is a powerful 
> mechanism which can be used to indicate precision for a large number 
> of assertions throughout an encoded document in an economical way. Its 
> scope is defined by the value of the target attribute, which defines 
> the context within which the pattern is evaluated. If no value is 
> supplied for the target attribute, the context assumed is the root of 
> the document.
As I hope is clear I agree that this is an extremely powerful mechanism 
and I think it is quite brilliant thinking on the part of the Oxford 
group. But I would argue that this has it the wrong way round. It 
suggests that @target is the normal way of defining the scope of 
@pattern and that a null @target is shorthand for root. In actual fact, 
it is @target that is the shorthand: a special attribute to be used for 
the (undoubtedly common) case where the scope referred to is by xml:id. 
If the scope is anything else it needs to be expressed on @pattern by 
xpath2. So I'd say something like the following:
> The pattern attribute used in these and other examples is a powerful 
> mechanism which can be used to indicate precision for a large number 
> of assertions throughout an encoded document in an economical way. If 
> @target has a value, this determines the context of @pattern. If 
> @target is not defined the context is is the root of the document.



Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> Daniel Paul O'Donnell wrote:
>
>> on this. But Sebastian, you agreed that introducing two methods of
>> referencing the same point at the same time using two different syntaxes
>> was an issue.
>
> yes, it is an issue. I could swing either way, though.
>
>
>> My own view is that a note saying that target + path is shorthand for
>> //*[xml:id]/<something else> is probably worthwhile.
>
> I _thought_ I saw something about this in
> Lou's new prose? I agree, its worth stressing.
>
>
>

-- 
Daniel Paul O'Donnell
Associate Professor of English
University of Lethbridge

Chair and CEO, Text Encoding Initiative (http://www.tei-c.org/)
Founding Director, Digital Medievalist Project (http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/)
Chair, Electronic Editions Advisory Board, Medieval Academy of America

Vox: +1 403 329-2377
Fax: +1 403 382-7191 (non-confidental)
Home Page: http://people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odonnell/