[tei-council] naming conventions

Sun Dec 4 12:52:17 EST 2011

Thanks Martin, you are right, on both counts. Dunno how it got 
uppercased -- I definitely wrote "tei"

On 04/12/11 17:22, Martin Holmes wrote:
> This is good, and it should definitely be in the Guidelines somewhere. I
> think this:
>
> <item>where an element name contains more than one token, the second
> token, and any subsequent ones, are capitalised. Thus
> <gi>biblStruct</gi>,<gi>listPerson</gi></item>
>
> should be "the first letter of the second token", not the whole token.
>
> Is the prefix really "TEI"? I always though it was "tei".
>
> Cheers,
> Martin
>
> On 11-12-04 06:15 AM, Lou Burnard wrote:
>> Thinking again about the need to explain grp vs list I poked around for
>> the section in the Guidelines which explains the naming conventions. In
>> vain, for no such section actually exists. On the basis of sundry other
>> documents, and my own understanding, I therefore tried to write one, and
>> the result follows.
>>
>> Do you think this material *should* go into the Guidelines? and if so
>> where? I rather think it belongs in the chapter "About these Guidelines"
>> which already includes a section on conventions in the Guidelines, but
>> others (well, Laurent) have suggested it might go into the Tag
>> Documentation section, since that is where people will need it.
>>
>> But maybe we don't want to include it in either place.
>>
>> Your views?
>>
>> ----------------
>>
>> <div>
>> <head>TEI naming conventions</head>
>> <p>The TEI Guidelines use a more or less consistent set of conventions
>> in the naming of XML elements and classes. This section summarizes
>> those conventions.</p>
>> <div>
>> <head>Element and attribute names</head>
>> <p>In the TEI Guidelines an unadorned name such as<q>blort</q>   is the
>> name of a TEI element or attribute.<note place="foot">During
>> generation of TEI RelaxNG schema fragments, the patterns corresponding
>> with these TEI names are given a prefix<code>TEI</code>   to allow them
>> to co-exist with names from other XML namespace. This prefix is not
>> visible to the end user, and is not used in TEI documentation. When
>> generating multi-namespace schemas, however, the user needs to be
>> aware of them.</note>.</p>
>> <p>The following conventions apply to the choice of names :
>> <list>
>> <item>elements are given generic identifiers as far as possible
>> consisting of one or more<term>tokens</term>, by which we mean whole
>> words or recognisable abbreviations of them, taken from the English
>> language</item>
>> <item>where an element name contains more than one token, the second
>> token, and any subsequent ones, are capitalised. Thus
>> <gi>biblStruct</gi>,<gi>listPerson</gi></item>
>> <item>attributes are named in the same way</item>
>> <item>module names also use whole words, for the most part, but are
>> always all lower case</item>
>> <item>the specification for an element or attribute whose name
>> contains abbreviations generally also includes a<gi>gloss</gi>
>> element providing the expanded sense of the name.</item>
>> <item>an element specification may also contain approved translations
>> for element or attribute names in one or more other languages using
>> the<gi>altIdent</gi>   element; this is not however generally done in
>> TEI P5.</item>
>> </list>
>> </p>
>>
>> <p>Whole words are generally preferred for clarity. The following
>> abbreviations are however commonly used within generic identifiers:
>> <list>
>>
>> <label>att</label>
>> <item>attribute</item>
>> <label>bibl</label>
>> <item>bibliographic description or reference in a bibliography</item>
>> <label>cat</label>
>> <item>category, especially as used in text classification</item>
>> <label>char</label>
>> <item>character, typically a Unicode character</item>
>> <label>doc</label>
>> <item>document : this usually refers to the original source document
>> which is being encoded,</item>
>> <label>decl</label>
>> <item>declaration : has a specific sense in the TEI
>> Header, as discussed in<ptr target="#HD12"/></item>
>> <label>desc</label>
>> <item>description : has a specific sense in the TEI Header, as
>> discussed in<ptr target="#HD12"/>   </item>
>> <label>grp</label>
>> <item>group. In TEI usage, a group is distinguised from a list in that
>> the former associates several objects which act as a single entity,
>> while the latter does not. For example, a<gi>linkGrp</gi>   combines
>> several<gi>link</gi>   elements which have certain properties in
>> common, whereas a<gi>listBibl</gi>   simply lists a number of otherwise
>> unrelated<gi>bibl</gi>   elements.</item>
>> <label>interp</label>
>> <item>interpretation or analysis</item>
>> <label>lang</label><item>(natural) language</item>
>> <label>ms</label><item>manuscript</item>
>> <label>org</label>
>> <item>organization, that is, a named group of people or legal entity</item>
>> <label>rdg</label>
>> <item>reading or version found in a specific witness</item>
>> <label>ref</label><item>reference or link</item>
>> <label>spec</label>
>> <item>technical specification or definition</item>
>> <label>stmt</label>
>> <item>statement : used in a specific sense in the TEI Header,
>> as discussed in<ptr target="#HD12"/></item>
>> <label>struct</label>
>> <item>structured : that is, containing a specific set of
>> named elements rather than<soCalled>mixed content</soCalled></item>
>> <label>val</label>
>> <item>value, for example of a variable or an attribute</item>
>> <label>wit</label>
>> <item>witness: that is, a specific document which attests specific
>> readings in a textual tradition or apparatus</item>
>> </list>
>> </p>
>> <p>Some abbreviations are used inconsistently: for example,
>> <gi>add</gi>   is an addition, and<gi>addSpan</gi>   is a spanning
>> addition, but<gi>addName</gi>   is an additional name, not the name of
>> an addition. Such inconsistencies are relatively few in number, and it
>> is hoped to remove them in subsequent revisions of the Guidelines.</p>
>> <p>Some elements have very short abbreviated names: these are for the
>> most part elements which are likely to be used very frequently in a
>> marked up text, for example<gi>p</gi>   (paragraph),<gi>s</gi>
>> (segment)<gi>hi</gi>   (highlighted phrase),<gi>ptr</gi>   (pointer),
>> <gi>div</gi>   (division) etc. We do not specifically list such elements
>> here: as noted above, an expansion of each such abbreviated name is
>> provided within the documentation using the<gi>gloss</gi>   element
>> .</p>
>> </div>
>> </div>
>> <div>
>> <head>Class, macro, and datatype names</head>
>>
>> <p>All named objects other than elements and attributes have one of
>> the following prefixes, which indicate whether the object is a module,
>> an attribute class, a model class, a datatype, or a macro:<table
>> id="tableOverallNaming">
>> <row role="label">
>> <cell>Component</cell>
>> <cell>Name</cell>
>> <cell>Example</cell>
>> </row>
>> <row><cell>Attribute
>> Classes</cell><cell>att.*</cell><cell>att.global</cell></row>
>> <row><cell>Model
>> Classes</cell><cell>model.*</cell><cell>model.biblPart</cell></row>
>> <row><cell>Macros</cell><cell>macro.*</cell><cell>macro.paraContent</cell></row>
>> <row><cell>Datatypes</cell><cell>data.*</cell><cell>data.pointer</cell></row>
>> </table>
>> </p>
>> <p>The concepts of model class, attribute class, etc. are defined in
>> <ptr target="ST"/>.  Here we simply note some conventions about their
>> naming.</p>
>>
>> <p>The following rules apply to attribute class names :<list>
>> <item>attribute class names take the form<code>att.xxx</code>, where
>> <code>xxx</code>   is typically an adjective, or a series of adjectives
>> separated by dots, describing a property common to the attributes
>> which make up the class.</item>
>> <item>attributes with the same name are considered to have the same
>> semantics, whether the attribute is inherited from a class, or locally
>> defined;</item>
>> </list>
>> </p>
>>
>> <p>The following rules apply to model class names:<list>
>> <item>Model classes have names beginning<code>model.</code>   followed
>> by a<term>root name</term>, and zero or more suffixes as described
>> below.</item>
>> <item>A root name may be the name of an element, generally the
>> prototypical parent or sibling for elements which are members of the
>> class.</item>
>> <item>The first suffix should be<code>Part</code>, if the class
>> members are all children of the element named rootname; or
>> <code>Like</code>, if the class members are all siblings of the
>> element named<code>rootname</code>.</item>
>> <item>The rootname<code>global</code>   is used to indicate that class
>> members are permitted anywhere in a TEI document.</item>
>> <item>Additional suffixes may be added, prefixed by a dot, to
>> distinguish subclasses, semantic or structural.</item>
>> </list>
>> </p>
>> <p>For example, the class of elements which can form part of a
>> <gi>div</gi>   is called<ident>model.divPart</ident>. This class
>> includes as a subclass the elements which can form part of a
>> <gi>div</gi>   in a spoken text, which is named
>> <ident>model.divPart.spoken</ident></p>
>>
>>
>> </div>
>>