[tei-council] <quotation>

[Lou Burnard]

On 11/12/12 10:26, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
>
>>>> 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?
>
> well, yes, there's an element of that I confess. but  we have gone so far
> in the last few years to make the Guidelines outputs closer to being
> implementable (datatyping, schematron etc), that I think <defaultVal>
> is looking a bit out of place now.


By all means lets have a discussion about the usefulness of <defaultVal>


>
>>>    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'll accept the word may be wrong, but the effect is the same. The creator
> of the <text> does not know what will happen in the rendered output if she omits
> <quotation>. If she chooses to write <quotation marks="some"> the
> she'll get her sandy deserts of course.


Who is this foolish woman? The encoder of a text chooses to encode what 
is significant to them. They may not ever intend the text to be 
rendered, and they may not care tuppence what happens when your 
stylesheet hits it!

>
>>
>>> 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.
>
> I did take the liberty of removing the one I found in <said>. If people
> think that was bad, I'll restore them.

I think they should be restored but *inside* the element, for 
consistency with the other <said> examples, where you have mdashes 
retained inside the element. I suspect that Martin originally put them 
outside by analogy with the punctuation inside a <bibl>, but I think the 
analogy is misleading.


> So do you agree that the simplest thing to do is remove that <defaultVal>,
> as it arguably contradicts the prose?

As aforesaid, I don't see that there is a contradiction, but I agree 
that <defaultVal> is a pain in the bum