[tei-council] "soft deprecation": use @status='deprecated' ?

[James Cummings]

I think I'm with Lou and partly with Gabby here.

When something is deprecated, it is deprecated. It should get a 
little red warning on the reference page. And it would be even 
better if there was a date attached so it could say 'To be 
removed at the release following 2014-01-13' or something.  IF 
our user community read the reference pages regularly then I 
think that is where it should end.  However, I think it much more 
likely that they use the schemas in oxygen, start putting in an 
element and if it is allowed then it is allowed.  Thus schematron 
warning rules and a change to the description might be beneficial.

I see the following options on deprecation:

A) Marked as deprecated on the reference page preferably with a 
note with date or similar at which it will be removed.

B) Marked as deprecated on the reference page preferably with a 
note with date or similar at which it will be removed, and a 
schematron warning rule set up.

C) Marked as deprecated on the reference page preferably with a 
note with date or similar at which it will be removed, a 
schematron warning rule set up, and the <desc> changed to be 
prefixed with 'DEPRECATED: '.

Changing the <desc> will result in people noticing this in 
tooltips in software like oXygen, make it that much more evident 
on the reference page, and where specDesc has been used to pull 
in the description elsewhere.

Of these I'd prefer that we are the clearest we can possibly be, 
and so would vote for C.

-James

On 14/01/13 11:27, Gabriel Bodard wrote:
> I never use warnings in my Schematron, primarily because they're
> annoying. If something is disrecommended rather than incorrect, then
> presumably that means it's sometimes right, and I don't want to get a
> validation error (even if it is a less "wrong" color) every time it
> occurs. I don't know any validator that doesn't say "errors found" when
> schematron issues warnings.
>
> That said, I think the value of deprecation is precisely that people can
> carry on using the deprecated attribute (vel sim) without having to
> think about it especially, just receiving a gentle warning (in the
> Guidelines, I guess) rather than that people have to speifically
> re-introduce a deprecation module to their schema to keep the attribute
> around. In general people who want to be this proactive with their
> schemas are the ones who will take account of deprecation the soonest.
>
> tl;dr I vote for the red "Deprecated" flag in the element/class Spec page.
>
> Gabby
>
> On 2013-01-14 09:43, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
>>
>> On 13 Jan 2013, at 23:57, Martin Holmes <mholmes at uvic.ca>
>>    wrote:
>>
>>>> Does Schematron formally support Warnings as opposed to Errors?
>>>
>>> I use them in my Schematron and they certainly work in Oxygen. You just
>>> get a yellow icon instead of a red one in your validation results at the
>>> bottom of the screen.
>>>
>> sounds like we should use this immediately to indicate deprecation?
>>
>> --
>> Sebastian Rahtz
>> Director (Research Support) of Academic IT Services
>> University of Oxford IT Services
>> 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431
>>
>


-- 
Dr James Cummings, James.Cummings at it.ox.ac.uk
Academic IT Services, University of Oxford