[tei-council] <quotation>

[Lou Burnard]

On 11/12/12 09:48, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> as you'll probably have seen on TEI-L,

(If I didn't know you better, I'd find the tone of your message there a 
little offensive, btw)

I note that <quotation> is an optional element, with
> an optional attribute "marks". This "indicates whether or not quotation marks have been retained as content within the text."
> and has      <defaultVal>all</defaultVal>
>
> I'd like to ask permission to remove that <defaultVal>, for two reasons
>
>    a) we can't implement default values in RELAXNG schemas

Tail wagging dog?

>    b) because <quotation> is optional, the meaning of the "default" is ambiguous
>

It's not ambiguous: it's underspecified. They are not the same thing. 
"Underspecified" means an implementer can make up their own mind what to 
do in that case. "Ambiguous" means they cannot because they are given 
contradictory pieces of information

> I note that the Guidelines examples seem universally to
> NOT retain quotation marks.

"universally" meaning "nearly all of the time" I assume since your TEI-L 
message points to a case where they *are* retained. Anyway, yes, I think 
it reasonable to assume that <q> etc. normally replace the punctuation 
marks which triggered the assumption that this stretch of text should be 
treated as  "quotation" (that's what the definition says anyway). I 
think there's some discussion along those lines in the prose.  On the 
other hand, some people think (equally reasonably) that source 
punctuation is interesting and should be retained, so you need some way 
of being told which doctrine obtains in a given text.