[tei-council] attribute datatypes

[Martin Holmes]

I definitely agree with the principle. The two @interval attributes are 
interesting, though; in addition to a float (in both cases), <when> 
allows a string value of "unknown", while <timeline> has possible values 
of "regular" and "irregular". If we were to unify those under a single 
macro, those text values would have to be shared, and I'm not sure 
that's ideal. <when interval="irregular"> seems meaningless to me.

Cheers,
Martin

On 13-02-24 10:43 AM, Lou Burnard wrote:
> Just a word (well, several) on attribute datatypes.
>
> I believe our policy to be that attributes define their datatype
> indirectly by refering to one of the existing data.xxx macros, which
> are then mapped to a RELAXNG expression. This additional layer of
> indirection allows us to say something about the datatype
> independently of how it's currently constrained by the RELAXNG
> schemas, and is thus, I contend, A Good Thing, which should be applied
> consistently. As, for the most part, it is. However I have
> discovered the following which appear to me to be anomalous:
>
> 1. source at readFrom is defined directly as "anyURI" which is a macro,
> not a datatype: It should be corrected to data.pointer
>
> 2. att.lexicographic at opt and fDecl at optional  are both defined as
> boolean, but should probably be data.truthValue
>
> 3. timeline at interval and when at interval are both defined using ad
> hoc RNG constructs (but not identical ones); we should define a
> data.interval which is consistent.
>
> 4. language at usage uses an adhoc RNG datatype directly; we should
> define a new "data.percentage" macro for it (and look for other cases
> where this might be used)
>
> 5. application at version uses an  adhoc RNG expression, which surely ought
> to be replaced by a "data.versionNum" macro
>
> 6. Several attributes [moduleRef at except and @include;
> att.identified at module; @key, on classRef, elementRef, macroRef, and
> moduleRef; moduleRef at prefix] use the built in RNG datatype "NCName". It
> might
> be more consistent to define  our own macro "data.xmlName" vel sim.
>
> 7. That old bugbear rng:text is still used on most of the attributes
> delivered by att.lexicographic (expand, norm, orig, split, and
> value); two attributes which hold regexp values
> (att.patternReplacement at replacementPattern and att.scoping at match);
> also on  refState at delim, and valItem at ident.  I think we should have
> just one datatype for "string of words to be treated as a single entity" and
> use that for some of these; for the regexpes surely we should have
> data.regexp.
>
>
> 8. Many many attributes currently include <valList>s of various levels
> of closure. I felt too faint to check (and I think someone else
> already has), but they should all also have a datatype of data.enumerated.
>
> Yes, I know this should be a ticket or several such. But I thought it
> might be a good idea to check that we're all agreed on the principle
> before setting in motion its consequences.
>