[tei-council] Tite and conformance (long)

[O'Donnell, Dan]

since I said repeatedly that it can't be conformant because it drops the header, i think you're pushing on an open door, there. But we don't simply throw our hands up when something is not algorithmically conformable. I'd suggested it might be an extension. or do extension have to be otherwise conformable?

The reason for worrying about this is that we are promulgating Tite and considering as the basis of what will be a very high profile benefit. It is bad policy to promulgate something that has aspects that we strongly deprecate in our guidelines (i.e. The namespace issue).

So we either need to adjust the guidelines to reflect the possibility of things like Tite in its current form--which is a distillation of actual use cases remember--or see if we can't find a way of squaring it with our chapter on conformance, extension, and modification. This second is my preference.

So Tite is not conformant and can't be as long as it drops the header. I don't know if it is an extension or not, but that's probably a theological rather than a practical question. 

In my view the really important issue from both a good practice/educational perspective and a policy point of view is that tite shouldn't engage in strongly deprecated behaviour. Its for that reason I think we need to solve the namespace issue.
-----------
Daniel O'Donnell
University of Lethbridge
(From my mobile telephone)

--- original message ---
From: "James Cummings" <James.Cummings at oucs.ox.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [tei-council] Tite and conformance (long)
Date: July 9, 2009
Time: 12:43:6 

Daniel Paul O'Donnell wrote:
> The Header
> As I see it, dropping the header is allowed by 23.2.1.1 (Deleting 
> elements) 
> http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/USE.html#MDMDSU. It 
> is a pretty big drop, but it doesn't wreck the TEI abstract model, since 
> it just deletes something rather than reorganises a content model (see 
> 23.3.3 Conformance to the TEI Abstract Model 
> http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/USE.html#CFAM).

I'm sorry but this just isn't true.

Deleting elements is all fine and dandy but several other places in the 
TEI Guidelines we say that you *must* have a teiHeader element to create 
a TEI Conformant document.  Dropping the teiHeader incontrovertibly 
breaks the TEI Abstract Model as defined by the TEI Guidelines.  A 
random example from HD:

"Every TEI-conformant text must carry such a set of descriptions, 
prefixed to it and encoded as described in this chapter. The set is 
known as the TEI header, tagged teiHeader, and has four major parts:"
http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/HD.html

> Dropping the header makes Tite an Extension rather than a conformant or 
> conformable document, since conversion to TEI cannot be done 
> algorithmically (the information needed for the header is not found in 
> the source document). This is countenanced (though in quite negative 
> terms) by 23.3.3.2 (Mandatory Components of a TEI document) 
> http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/USE.html#CFAMmc

I don't see how this countenances dropping the header?  It says quite 
clearly to me that if you don't have a header, you aren't TEI 
Conformant.  Maybe I'm misunderstanding you?  The teiHeader is an 
integral component of the the TEI Abstract Model, if you don't have a 
header, then your document is non-Conformant. Therefore any Tite 
document is non-Conformant and is not a TEI document.  It is column B in 
the table listing 'Varieties of Conformance', which clearly states 'This 
is not a TEI Document'.

But I thought we had already noted this and resigned ourselves to the 
fact that Tite documents are not TEI P5 Conformant but that was 'ok' 
because they were only transitory forms of the documents created in 
processing?

-James
-- 
Dr James Cummings, Research Technologies Service, University of Oxford
James dot Cummings at oucs dot ox dot ac dot uk