[tei-council] Another issue with @pattern

[Lou Burnard]

Believe me, it *was* broken!

Gabriel Bodard wrote:
> Actually I do like Lou's suggested retraction (especially since I'm not 
> sure <certainty/> was ever broken, and I've been hoping that when I 
> finally get around to running my ODD through the new Roma--probably 
> tomorrow now--there will still be the simple way to indicate things). It 
> may be that the more complex XPath syntax serves a useful purpose, but I 
> haven't heard anyone clamouring for it yet.
>
> But I haven't fully digested all this yet, and as I say, I haven't tried 
> it out yet either.
>
> G
>
> James Cummings a écrit :
>   
>> Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
>>     
>>> Lou Burnard wrote:
>>>       
>>>> If the can of worms that @path opens proves to be a pandora's box, 
>>>> then I propose to withdraw it hastily, and replace it with one or 
>>>> other of the following less attractive hacks:
>>>>
>>>> a) restore the possibility of specifying that the locus of uncertainty 
>>>> is an attribute value by allowing for a value of "@" + anyWord on @locus
>>>>
>>>> b) replace @pattern by an ad hoc @attribute attribute
>>>>
>>>>   
>>>>         
>>> yikes no, stick with this good stuff. we can add and elucidate
>>> prose explanations at our leisure
>>>       
>> I'd agree with Sebastian that @pattern provides a very useful mechanism 
>> and we shouldn't throw out the idea.  I just want us to be clear on how 
>> it is used and what it means.  It just needs some clear prose.
>>
>> I think I've realised one of the reasons why people are confused as to 
>> the meaning of @pattern when we don't have a @target.  People are used, 
>> in XSLT, to putting <xsl:template match="@resp">  and having it acted 
>> upon (if possible) on any processed node in the document. However *all* 
>> template matches are a pattern which are always relative only to the 
>> context node that is currently being processed.  So it is only because 
>> template are applied at each level of the document to which templates 
>> are applied that such an instruction appears to become universal.  If we 
>> say that without a @target the context node is the root node of the 
>> document (TEI or teiCorpus) then we need to always be explicit in our 
>> patterns from there (so //*/@resp or text/body/div//choice/@resp etc.)
>>
>> -James
>>     
>
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