[tei-council] @key to be deprecated?

[Martin Holmes]

On 11-09-16 08:50 AM, Kevin Hawkins wrote:
> For a project I'm working on, we've dealt with this "loose linking" by
> inventing a URN scheme.
>
> <ref target="urn:projectname:britain#london">
>
> That is, we leave it up to software to resolve this URN to find britain.xml.

That would work for us too, but @key="london" sure is simpler and quicker.

Cheers,
Martin

>
> On 9/16/2011 11:22 AM, Martin Holmes wrote:
>> Thanks for finding this, Kevin. The idea of deprecating @key, and
>> leaving us without an attribute with the datatype data.key (excepting
>> @lemma), is a bit worrying to me. This is the issue I'm dealing with:
>>
>> Imagine you have this kind of folder structure:
>>
>> data /
>> people /
>> places /
>> countries /
>> rivers /
>> documents /
>>
>> where TEI documents exist at every level of the structure. Then let's
>> say that inside "countries" you have britain.xml, with a bunch of
>> <place>  elements, of which one is<place xml:id="london">.
>>
>> Now let's imagine you have documents all over the place which need to
>> link to this xml:id. You could do this:
>>
>> <ref target="../places/countries/britain.xml#london">
>>
>> However, each document which contains a link may have a different
>> relative path to get to the britain.xml file; and any of these documents
>> may move around in the structure, as you reorganize your data,
>> invalidating the links. data.pointer, as far as I understand it, should
>> really be an accurate pointer to the resource, but in the context of a
>> loosely-structured XML collection, that may not be possible as paths
>> will change. However, within the context of (say) an eXist database,
>> it's perfectly possible to find what you're searching for using a
>> data.key which consists of the @xml:id of the target.
>>
>> Therefore, if the proposal to deprecate @key is still alive, I'd like to
>> address it and, if possible, kill it. I think @key is the best solution
>> to this kind of loose linking.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Martin
>>
>> On 11-09-16 06:30 AM, Kevin Hawkins wrote:
>>> I'm not sure what made Martin recall this discussion about deprecating
>>> @key, but this is exactly what I was brought up in another thread
>>> yesterday. See:
>>>
>>> http://www.tei-c.org/Activities/Council/Meetings/tcm45.xml
>>>
>>> for which the discussion about @key seems to reference this ticket:
>>>
>>> https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2919640&group_id=106328&atid=644065
>>>
>>>
>>> --Kevin
>>>
>>> On 9/16/2011 2:08 AM, Laurent Romary wrote:
>>>> HI Martin,
>>>> I don't remember such a thing, and @key is indeed needed in many
>>>> cases where there is no reference description for a given entity.
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Laurent
>>>>
>>>> Le 15 sept. 2011 à 23:34, Martin Holmes a écrit :
>>>>
>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>
>>>>> I seem to remember some discussion about deprecating @key, or changing
>>>>> it to a URI, but I can't find any mention of it in the archives or on
>>>>> SF. Does anyone remember anything about this? I find I really need it
>>>>> for something, in a context where I can't use a URI, so I want to make
>>>>> sure it's going to continue to be available.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Martin
>>>>> --
>>>>> Martin Holmes
>>>>> University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre
>>>>> (mholmes at uvic.ca)
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> tei-council mailing list
>>>>> tei-council at lists.village.Virginia.EDU
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>>>>>
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>>>>
>>>> Laurent Romary
>>>> INRIA&  HUB-IDSL
>>>> laurent.romary at inria.fr
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>
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-- 
Martin Holmes
University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre
(mholmes at uvic.ca)