[tei-council] @style /rend/rendition coexistence

[Martin Holmes]

I think insofar as we can, we should mimic what HTML does. So in this case:

<foo rendition="#something" style="something else">

the rules in #something are first applied, and then the rules in @style 
complement/override them. This means that any rule in @style overrides 
any rule for the same property which has been defined in #something.

In the case of this:

<foo style="something else" rend="wibble">

I see no reason to outlaw it; there will be cases in which no property 
exists in CSS (or whatever formal language is in use) is available to 
cover a particular feature, so @rend can be used to specify it; since 
there is no way of doing whatever-it-is in CSS, then there's no 
requirement to specify formally how they interact, because they can't. 
It would make no sense to do this:

<foo style="font-style: normal;" rend="italic">

but I don't think it's our job to try to prevent people creating 
oxymoronic encodings.

On these:

 > -- What does "unification" mean if the expressions come from different
 > languages? (e.g FO and CSS)

In that specific case, FO uses CSS, so I'm not really clear on why you 
would use both. But where such questions arise, they have to be dealt 
with in encodingDesc, I think.

 > -- Where do we specify the language in which @style values are 
expressed ?

There has to be an element in the header, presumably in <tagsDecl>. 
Something like this:

<style scheme="css"></style>

although I'm not sure we want to go with the same potential confusion as 
we've already got with <rendition> vs @rendition. Perhaps:

<styleDesc scheme="css">
[More detailed prose explanations go here.]
</styleDesc>

Cheers,
Martin

On 12-10-05 11:08 AM, Lou Burnard wrote:
> Just to make sure we're all on the same page, here are some suggested
> rules on style/rend/rendition usage, to be documented in STGA as part of
> my introduction of @style.
>
>
> 1. An element's style can be specified generically using the <rendition>
> element. i.e. if I find a <foo> AND  there's a  <rendition> is supplied
> within <tagUsage ident="foo">, then that's the default
>
> Unless...
>
> 2. ... <foo rendition="#something"> means that the rendition supplied by
> <rendition xml:id="something"> over-rides (or complements?) any default.
>
> or
>
> 3. ... <foo style="text:style whatever"> works in the same way i.e. any
> default is over-ridden (or complemented?)
>
> or
>
> 4. ... <foo rend="wibble"> is entirely independent of any rendition
> rules inherited from <rendition>. My applications Just Have To Know what
> wibbled text is and deal accordingly.
>
> If that's so...
>
> A. What does
>
> <foo rendition="#something" style="something else"> mean?
>
> Is it illegal? or does it mean that "#something" and "something else"
> have to be unified, in just the same way as they would if "something
> else" were the default <rendition> for <foo> and I had supplied just the
> @rendition attribute.
>
> B. What does
>
> <foo style="something else" rend="wibble"> mean?
>
> By rule 4, we Just Don't Know. But we don't feel brave enough to outlaw
> it. Or do we?
>
> Outstanding questions.
>
> -- What does "unification" mean if the expressions come from different
> languages? (e.g FO and CSS)
>
> -- Where do we specify the language in which @style values are expressed ?
>
>
>

-- 
Martin Holmes
University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre
(mholmes at uvic.ca)