[tei-council] @xml:space, whitespace and http://purl.org/tei/bug/3600991

[Sebastian Rahtz]

On 16 Jan 2013, at 13:57, James Cummings <James.Cummings at it.ox.ac.uk>
 wrote:

> 
> Some of the confusion, I think, might revolve around the 
> dichotomy (which TEI exposes as false) between a simplistic view 
> of an element's content as 'structured' or 'mixed content'.  The 
> TEI allows the same element to act as both and <persName> is 
> indeed a good example of this.

i dont agree. persName is a mixed-content element, always. you may choose
to pretend thats not so, in your project, but the TEI schema says that
it can contain text nodes, so anything you put in must be treated as such

> If it is not mixed content then the tests 
> I've done indicate it is usually treated as if it is what John 
> calls a 'structured' element.  To do otherwise implies 
> schema-aware processing.

no, no, and no. i think you're falling into john's trap

> There are plenty of times I've treated 
> <persName> as if it is a 'structured' element... in fact I prefer 
> to do that.
i honestly think you are confusing two issues

  * whether you choose to record punctuation, or insert it at render time
  * whether the whitespace between elements is, according to the TEI,
 meaningful

>  I've never used @xml:space to indicate my intention, 
> just relied on things following the same assumptions as me.

and thats what causes John to have no hair, and a bruise on his
head from banging it on the wall. xml:space is simply not
relevant to whether those line endings after <forename>
are significant or not.

but i wholeheartedly agree, just remove the sentence
"If it is done, the schema should be customised to record the fact"
- what he means is, redefine the element so that the element
cannot cannot text, and then adjust your strip-space accordingly.

--
Sebastian Rahtz      
Director (Research Support) of Academic IT Services 
University of Oxford IT Services
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431