[tei-council] @key to be deprecated: @loc involved too?

Fri Sep 23 02:50:59 EDT 2011

Especially when one of the two examples in the guidelines using the @loc attribute is actually pointing to an ID! see http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/TC.html#TCSCWL
Add this to the ticket...

Le 22 sept. 2011 à 18:36, Martin Holmes a écrit :

> I see that @loc is also:
> 
> 1–∞ occurrences of data.word
> 
> Should we be thinking about this changing to data.pointer too?
> 
> Cheers,
> Martin
> 
> On 11-09-20 09:30 AM, Laurent Romary wrote:
>> I follow Martin here (simpler system..;). Without any prejudice on the final outcome, I would urge him to file a ticket with the various elements he has mentioned in his last posts.
>> Cheers,
>> Laurent
>> 
>> Le 20 sept. 2011 à 17:31, Martin Holmes a écrit :
>> 
>>> I think we're talking about trying to arrive at a much simpler system in
>>> the very long run (hence deprecation); once again, here, we have
>>> multiple ways of doing the same thing, some of which we're proposing to
>>> recommend (URIs in @ref) and the other of which we're going to continue
>>> to allow (magic tokens in @key). One of the most common complaints we
>>> hear both from experts and from new users is that TEI has too many ways
>>> of doing the same thing, so where one method is clearly superior to the
>>> other, we should surely plan to move towards it.
>>> 
>>> Cheers,
>>> Martin
>>> 
>>> On 11-09-20 08:24 AM, Lou Burnard wrote:
>>>> I'm not sure that I agree with Martin's analysis.
>>>> 
>>>> a) Are there any places where @key is permitted but not @ref? if there
>>>> are, then I agree that @ref should be added as an alternative
>>>> 
>>>> b) Changing *all* examples using @key to examples using @ref seems like
>>>> an over reaction to me though I agree that we need to increase the
>>>> number of examples using @ref=my:uri:notation
>>>> 
>>>> I had interpreted the sense of the preceding discussion to be that we
>>>> understood why people might want to supply a privately magic token as
>>>> the value for @key but that they needed to be reminded that an
>>>> alternative slightly less magical option would be to use @ref with the
>>>> proposed URI syntax.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On 20/09/11 16:19, David Sewell wrote:
>>>>> Should the issue of deprecating @key be submitted for discussion to
>>>>> TEI-L before any final decision is made? So far as I can see, this has
>>>>> been mentioned only once on TEI-L in posts by Gabby and James, see
>>>>> http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1102&L=TEI-L&P=R297
>>>>> 
>>>>> David
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Tue, 20 Sep 2011, Martin Holmes wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> OK, I'm becoming convinced on this. It looks like we need a ticket in
>>>>>> SF, along the lines of:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 1. @key will be deprecated. (Still not exactly clear on that process.)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 2. @ref will be added wherever @key is currently allowed, but @ref is not.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 3. All examples showing @key will be changed to show @ref, and magic
>>>>>> tokens without colons will be replaced with magic tokens that have colons.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 4. The documentation for @ref will be expanded to include an explanation
>>>>>> and examples of URIs which are not URLs (by which I presume we mean:
>>>>>> URIs which do not resolve to anything that can be located on the network).
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Have I missed anything? Does this replace or subsume any existing tickets?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>>> Martin
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On 11-09-19 08:49 AM, James Cummings wrote:
>>>>>>> On 19/09/11 16:12, Martin Holmes wrote:
>>>>>>>> Hi James,
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Hi Martin,
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> I'll play devil's advocate on this. I think using URIs (in the
>>>>>>>>> form of URNs), even just locally constructed ones like
>>>>>>>>> foo:blort:1234 is a much better system than just bare keys which
>>>>>>>>> are just as much magic.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Isn't foo:blort:1234 just magic too? If I've understood the proposal
>>>>>>>> correctly, foo: and blort: don't resolve to anything meaningful; isn't
>>>>>>>> foo:blort:1234 just a magic key that happens to have colons in it?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Yes, that is what I meant be 'just as much magic'. They are both
>>>>>>> magic. However, the URN-style magic key is a faceted one. (I know
>>>>>>> you could just make your @key value do this as well.)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Backward-compatibility is the obvious one.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Yes, agreed.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> In that case, we're going to have an escalating tension between the
>>>>>>>> Birnbaum doctrine and the need to clean up problems in P5 (like this
>>>>>>>> one, perhaps, if you see it as a problem).
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Perhaps, but the Birnbaum Doctrine doesn't say that we're not
>>>>>>> allow to break backwards compatibility, just that we should have
>>>>>>> a deprecation structure to do so.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> You actually caught me doing that (inadvertently) in an early version of
>>>>>>>> the Image Markup Tool, IIRC.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Oh yes, I remember that, naughty Martin. :-P (He says quickly
>>>>>>> hiding any of his code where he certainly sins in greater orders
>>>>>>> of magnitude.)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> And I agree that's completely wrong when
>>>>>>>> using @ref; but I would argue that's why @key is helpful. When you're
>>>>>>>> still working out the structure of your repository and the relative
>>>>>>>> locations of files and subcollections, not having to be precise about
>>>>>>>> the path to a particular @xml:id is very handy.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Surely since you *can* do this ref="foo" then people will just do
>>>>>>> that while they are still working out their repository structure
>>>>>>> or system of magic keys?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> And if you get rid of
>>>>>>>> @key, people are just going to use @n for the same job, I bet.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> What people abuse @n for something that is not a potentially
>>>>>>> non-unique number or other label, but instead some magic token to
>>>>>>> identify specific classes of elements?  Never... no one would
>>>>>>> ever do that!  I mean that would be like using @rend to refer to
>>>>>>> _output_ rendition not source rendition. *grin*  Erm, yeah, ok, I
>>>>>>> see your point. People would certainly do that, yes.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I still think using a URN-like URI on @ref is better because it
>>>>>>> forces you to consider _some_ form of classification or
>>>>>>> documentation principle. But yours are all good arguments for
>>>>>>> maintaining @key.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> -James
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
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>>> 
>>> --
>>> Martin Holmes
>>> University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre
>>> (mholmes at uvic.ca)
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>> 
>> Laurent Romary
>> INRIA&  HUB-IDSL
>> laurent.romary at inria.fr
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> .
>> 
> 
> -- 
> Martin Holmes
> University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre
> (mholmes at uvic.ca)
> _______________________________________________
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Laurent Romary
INRIA & HUB-IDSL
laurent.romary at inria.fr