[tei-council] Disambiguation of <ident> and <idno> (and also <gi>)

[Sebastian Rahtz]

On 23 Nov 2011, at 00:16, Martin Holmes wrote:

> 
> My initial impulse is to supplement these descriptions with something 
> along these lines:
> 
> -------
> <ident> should be used for tokens such as variable names, class names, 
> type names, function names etc. in formal programming languages. (It 
> should not be used for element and attribute names in XML, for which the 
> special elements <gi> and <att> are provided.)
> 
> <idno> should be used for labels which uniquely identify an object or 
> concept in a formal cataloguing system such as a database or an RDF 
> store, or in a distributed system such as the World Wide Web.

yes, I like the word "uniquely" there. <ident> is to label something
as an identifier in a passive sort of way, <idno> is a much more
positive claim, and (critically) has a _context_, of thing it is identifying.

so

   <p> variable <ident>name</ident> is declared here</p>

makes sense, but 

  <p> variable <idno>name</idno> is declared here</p>

means ??? supplies an ID for this para? anyway, wrong.


> 
> 1. Do you think that my explanatory text is accurate and helpful enough 
> to do the job of disambiguating these two elements?

its good. do you think my ideas about context fly?

> 
> 2. Does our usage of the tags in the Guidelines comply with what we 
> believe to be the use-cases of the elements? (Ignoring for the moment 
> the case of the questionable uses of <ident> below.)
> 
yes, from your list.

> ...

> Here the same text has been classified as of categories <val>b.a4</val> and
> <val>b.d2</val> within the Brown classification scheme (presumed to be
> available from <ident 
> type="file">http://www.example.com/browncorpus</ident>), and as of category
> <q>A45</q> within the SUC classification scheme documented at the URL 
> given.</p>
I think I might use <ptr> there :-} the <q> should be <ident>, though?


--
Stormageddon Rahtz      
Head of Information and Support Group, Oxford University Computing Services
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431

Sólo le pido a Dios
que el futuro no me sea indiferente