[tei-council] teilite.dtd standin

[David Sewell]

If in the end Council decides an Apache redirect is the way to go, let 
me know and I'll ask Shayne to implement it. (With an HTTP 301 
"Permanent redirect" code?)

That's assuming UVA is still standing after Hurricane Sandy gets done 
with us.  :-)

David

(Actually, central Virginia is probably just going to get about 10-15 cm 
of rain and some gusty winds starting mid-day Monday, but I may be semi- 
or fully offline for a while if I'm stuck at home and the power goes 
out.)

On Sat, 27 Oct 2012, Lou Burnard wrote:

> I had a vague memory that we considered but decided against doing a
> redirection though I can't remember why. But if it's possible, I agree
> this would be preferable.
>
>
>
> On 27/10/12 12:08, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
>> On 27 Oct 2012, at 09:54, Lou Burnard <lou.burnard at retired.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> On 26/10/12 22:36, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
>>>> sorry to be a party pooper, but this is (IMHO) an awful idea.
>>> so what would you propose we do instead?
>>>
>> My preference is for a rewrite teilite.{dtd,rnc,rng) -> tei_lite.{dtd,rnc,rng)
>> because for most people it will just work. My second preference
>> is for no file at all, and trigger a comprehensible 404 error.
>>
>>>>   My
>>>> file containing
>>>>
>>>>   <!DOCTYPE ...." SYSTEM "...tei_lite.dtd">
>>>>
>>>> will now fail catastrophically, saying the DTD is invalid,
>>>> and I will have no idea why.
>>> Possibly you'll think, hmm, maybe I should take a look at that file?
>>>
>> I fear that we come from a generation which thinks like that. I have
>> no confidence many other people conceptualize the world like that.
>>
>> Consider the person with a repository of 1000 files, in P5, with
>> a  DOCTYPE pointing at Lite from the web site.  Possibly
>> these links are auto-generated. The user sees HTML generated on
>> the fly. Suddenly the HTML stops working. The error, when some
>> poor sys person follows up, says that the DTD is invalid. They follow
>> up, and find that the document calling itself teilite.dtd isn't a DTD at all!
>> I call that counter-intuitive. If the error is a 404, they say "oh well, links
>> break on the web, I wonder where its moved to" and go look.
>>
>> You may well reply that this scenario doesnt exist ....
>>>> Making the file non-existent
>>>> would be a much cleaner error.
>>> Is that your proposal? we simply remove the file teilite.dtd wherever we can? I dont mind doing that, but it doesnt help with the fact that lots of people point to copies of it we don't control.
>> thats an issue, always has been, i agree
>>
>>>   If the one we do control explains itself, maybe that's a good thing?
>>>
>> sure, its an argument.
>>
>> would you like it if, when you typed "perl", you got a message
>> saying that the file /usr/bin/perl was not executable, and you found,
>> on examining it, that it was in fact a README saying "gone fishing, use python instead"?
>> of course, you'd prefer it if that /usr/bin/perl _was_ executable, and gave you
>> a human readable message when you ran it. But we cant do that, since DTDs
>> dont do anything.  But having a file which claims (by its suffix and by its location)
>> to be a DTD, but isnt one, seems wrong.
>> --
>> Sebastian Rahtz
>> Director (Research Support) of Academic IT Services
>> University of Oxford IT Services
>> 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431
>>
>
>

-- 
David Sewell, Editorial and Technical Manager
ROTUNDA, The University of Virginia Press
PO Box 400314, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4314 USA
Email: dsewell at virginia.edu   Tel: +1 434 924 9973
Web: http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/