[tei-council] @cRef survey

[Martin Holmes]

Hi all,

I've had only nine responses to my @cRef survey so far, which suggests 
it's not in very wide use. People using it tend to be using it slightly 
incorrectly -- sometimes they're using canonical references with spaces 
in them, or they're using #id-in-different-document or 
#id-which-dunt-exist, and in no case has anyone created a <cRefPattern>.

So if we deprecated it, we'd annoy a small number of people, but there's 
no fix we could make to it that would bring them all into the fold of 
correct usage anyway. Usage is as much of a mess as the definitions are.

To deal with this issue, as well as that of @key, I think we need to 
take three steps:

1. Develop a proper strategy for the use of private URI schemes (with 
something similar to <cRefPattern> where people can properly document 
how their private schemes are to be dereferenced or understood). This 
should divert a large proportion of the current usage of @cRef (and 
@key) over to @ref and @target.

2. Decide whether we want to keep @key and @cRef, or deprecate one or both.

3. If we're keeping them, decide what their datatypes should be. In the 
case of @cRef, create a proper class for it.

4. If we're not keeping them, do we need replacement attribute(s) for 
their use-cases?

Cheers,
Martin