[tei-council] span span span span span span span span glorious span

[James Cummings]

On 19/08/11 16:29, Lou Burnard wrote:
> I'd like to propose the following set of rules.
>
> 1. @target behaves as elsewhere in the Guidelines -- it's a URL, which
> can point to one or more whole elements, or xpath-defined substrings

agreed.

> 2. @spanTo is also (as elsewhere) a URL., but it must point to a
> *single* element.

agreed.

> 3. it is erroneous to supply both attributes on the same element.

agreed.

> 4. if only @target is supplied, the passage/s affected are all the
> element content fragments indicated by the URIs supplied, treated as a
> single unit

agreed.

> 5. if only @spanTo is supplied, the passage affected is the sequence of
> content fragments that begins immediately following the element
> concerned and finishes  immediately preceding whatever element is
> indicated by the @spanTo attribute.

possibly disagree:
a) because of the non-linear transcription of some of the genetic 
materials, I'm suspicious that the @spanTo may in fact point 
backwards in the XML tree. (Potentially, while still pointing 
'forward' in an intellectual structure of a document?) I think 
that the spanning follows the document order is an assumption. 
(I take your point that processing spanning the other way is a 
potential *nightmare*)
b) I know you weren't necessarily going to use this wording but I 
also find 'immediately following the element concerned' a 
possible source of confusion, if and only if, @spanTo ever used 
on an element which has content. (I'm assuming it shouldn't be.)

> 6. if neither attribute is supplied, the markup is erroneous

Agreed. One of them is required, seems reasonable to me.

> <p>blah<delSpan spanTo="#delEnd"/>  blah</p>
> <p>blah<anchor xml:id="delEnd"/>  blah</p>
> (a)<p>blah blah</p>
> or
> (b)<p>blah</p><p>blah</p>

b, since this is deletion. The deletion applies to the content, 
not the markup we have interpreted and added.  (ok, I sense a 
genetic-editions-of-born-digital-objects-objection possible to my 
certainty.)

My two pence,

-James

-- 
Dr James Cummings, InfoDev,
Computing Services, University of Oxford