[tei-council] targetLang in att.pointing and schemaSpec

[Lou Burnard]

Sorry, I disagree.

We currently use @targetLang on <schemaSpec> with quite a plausible 
meaning. If that meaning isn't appropriate for the new attribute, it's 
the new guy who has to be renamed not the existing one.


On 25/04/12 15:17, Piotr Bański wrote:
> On 25/04/12 14:45, Martin Holmes wrote:
>> I think the original @targetLang on<schemaSpec>  is doing a completely
>> different job from the new one, isn't it? I think its purpose and
>> semantics are clear from the description:
>>
>> <http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/ref-schemaSpec.html>
>
> Indeed, on the second reading I understand what these "objects" are
> supposed to be. And you're right, namingLang would be a reasonable
> choice, targetLang seems actually a bit unfortunate in this context.
>
>    P.
>
>> although I don't know if anyone has ever used it. Given that ODD is
>> meant to be broader than TEI, someone may well use it at some point, if
>> they're working with a specification that allows element or attribute
>> names in different languages, so I'd recommend leaving it. I think it's
>> OK to have two attributes with the same name doing different jobs in
>> different contexts (although it's obviously not ideal). If we were to
>> make a change, I'd recommend changing schemaSpec/@targetLang to
>> @namingLang, or something like that.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Martin
>>
>> On 12-04-25 04:26 AM, Piotr Bański wrote:
>>> Thanks to Stuart's wiki list, I noticed that targetLang is now defined
>>> in two places: (a) att.pointing (new) and (b) schemaSpec (old).
>>>
>>> They don't differ in the datatype, but in the semantics ((a) identifies,
>>> (b) apparently prescribes) and the context ((a) accompanies @target and
>>> points at a remote resource, (b) acts locally; the Schematron rule for
>>> (a) is not applicable to (b)).
>>>
>>> (b) is listed in 23.4.1 (description pulled from the spec, there is no
>>> independent discussion of it), and actually, I don't fully understand
>>> what it is meant to do: "specifies which language to use when creating
>>> the objects in a schema if names for elements or attributes are
>>> available in more than one language".
>>>
>>> What should I do?
>>>
>>> 1. leave them as they are, effectively (b) becoming now a local override
>>> of (a), just like in the case of e.g. @type (but note that the situation
>>> is not fully analogous!)
>>>
>>> 2. rename (a), but it makes so much sense to leave this name, cf. [1],
>>> because it really nicely goes together with @target, and renaming it to
>>> the originally suggested "refLang" would create the somewhat misleading
>>> network of @target, @refLang (supposed to always accompany @target) and
>>> @targetLang (supposed NOT to accompany @target).
>>>
>>> [1]:
>>> https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=3288293&group_id=106328&atid=644065
>>>
>>> 3. create a ticket for renaming (b) to e.g. objectLang (as its
>>> description suggests)?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>>     P.
>