[tei-council] Should Roma be doing this?

[Martin Holmes]

I think the core problem here is that we've been using @type on <list> 
for all these years when we should have been using @rend. Doesn't this 
sound more sane?

@rend="bulleted"
@rend="numbered"
@rend="simple"

The only value of @type that really looks like a type to me is "gloss", 
but this is used, as far as I understand it, when there is a <label> 
preceding the <item>, and in that case the presence of <label> is 
sufficient to determine the output appearance.

So I would recommend:

1. Changing our recommendation so that we provide suggested values for 
@rend, not @type.

2. Adding a suggestion that using @style with CSS will provide a useful 
range of precise options that cover most cases.

3. Leaving @type on <list>, for backward compatibility, but providing no 
suggested values for it.

This will cause Sebastian considerable stylesheet-related pain, I know, 
so apologies for that.

Cheers,
martin


On 13-02-06 01:51 PM, James Cummings wrote:
>
> Just a quick note to say that I agree that list/@type is very
> difficult. I've always argued against our suggested value of
> 'bulleted' because I think it muddies these waters further.
> (That it is bulleted may apply to an ordered or unordered list...
> that, to me, is a more usually a feature of its rendition.)  I
> think most people interpret ordered also as rendition (numbered)
> but being able to distinguish that you think the order in this
> list set is important versus not being important is useful.
>
> -James
>
> On 06/02/13 15:19, Syd Bauman wrote:
>> I agree that <list> is rather tricky, now that you point out that
>> type= is often used to indicate what the list *looked like in the
>> original* (because, of course, except for those of us foolish enough
>> to use TEI to write things like papers and websites, nobody forgets
>> the TEI is about the input, not the output). But perhaps, with the
>> exception of "gloss" (which really means "I'm using <list> to encode
>> a 2-column <table> because it's easier), we don't need type= for this
>> purpose at all. After all, we already have rend=, rendition=, and
>> style=.
>>
>> Saying that a transcribed list is "ordered" seems a bit silly. Of
>> course it's ordered, and not only that, I've encoded the items in
>> that order. But perhaps "ordered" means "it has numbers (or letters)
>> in front of each item", in which case rend=, rendition=, or style=
>> seems like the more appropriate place to record that information. But
>> perhaps "ordered" means "I am asserting that the order of these items
>> was important to the author", in which case ana= seems more
>> appropriate, no?
>>
>> But of course, when <list> is used in an authorial instead of
>> transcriptional way, saying "ordered" is asserting "I want these
>> things in this order, and numbered please" which seems quite helpful.
>>
>> I guess my point here (besides that I'm *really* tired) is that we
>> should re-think list/@type entirely.
>>
>>> i think this case, <list>, is rather tricky, as the @type is rather
>>> vital. Usually, having no @type on an element is fine, but it is
>>> used very often with <list> to effectively indicate rendition.
>>>
>>> having a <defaultVal> is a confusion, as noted, but some prose
>>> indicating what an untyped list _does_ represent would be useful.
>>>
>>> it would be nice to have a facsimile of what the example from Pope
>>> Hadrian looked like.
>
>

-- 
Martin Holmes
University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre
(mholmes at uvic.ca)