[tei-council] list types and rends: bug 460

[Martin Holmes]

Hi all,

<https://sourceforge.net/p/tei/bugs/460/>

I was tasked with analysing the use of list/@type and list/@rend. This 
is the brief analysis, along with commentary and recommendations. Please 
read through the ticket itself before commenting; this is one issue 
where we've repeated our discussion at least once, and whenever we come 
back to it we seem to start right back at the beginning. :-)


Analysis of usage of list/@type and list/@rend in the Guidelines:

Our suggested values for list/@type are:

ordered, bulleted, simple, gloss

In Guidelines prose, we use:

list type="gloss": 59
list type="simple": 107
list type="ordered": 32
list rend="simple": 4
list rend="ordered": 4
list rend="specList": 1

In examples:

list type="ordered": 19
list type="gloss": 25
list type="speakers": 8
list type="simple": 8
list type="bullets": 3
list type="unordered": 2
list type="index": 2
list type="attendance": 2
list type="參與者": 1
list type="inline": 1
list type="indexentry": 1
list type="encoders": 3
list type="編碼員": 1
list rend="runon": 5

Some thoughts and recommendations based on the above analysis:

"gloss": This is clearly a type of list, and we are using it and 
exemplifying it as such.

	Recommendation:

	Leave "gloss" as a suggested value for @type.

"simple": I have no idea what this means. In the Guidelines, both 
@type="simple" and @rend='simple' are rendered as a bulleted list; yet 
we recommend "bulleted" as a value. This is silly. If "simple" means 
anything, it should mean "with no distinguishing features", i.e. not 
bulleted or numbered or anything. Furthermore, the third example in the 
list spec seems to be of a list which is intended to be rendered in a 
single paragraph (see source at 
<http://books.google.ca/books?id=Iq08AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA157&lpg=PA157&dq=These+decrees,+most+blessed+Pope+Hadrian&source=bl&ots=0xX2qtSUG3&sig=yLDKHUvE1BmdF9kRLVgeT006HwY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=cJG0UsjnEM34oATarYGQDA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=These%20decrees%2C%20most%20blessed%20Pope%20Hadrian&f=false>), 
so the example and our own practice do not accord.

	Recommendations:

	Remove "simple" as a suggested value from @type, and make it a 
suggested value on @rend.
	Render it as list-style-type="none" (i.e. no bullets), so that it has a 
function distinct from "bulleted".
	Change usage in the Guidelines prose to rend="bulleted" where we 
actually intend bullets.
	Change examples of @type="simple" to @rend="simple".

"ordered": As we have discussed on the ticket and in meetings, "ordered" 
and "unordered" are really meaningless; all lists are ordered and cannot 
be otherwise. Neither are they types of list. If by "ordered" we mean 
"numbered", then that's what we should use a value that reflects this; 
and since it's a rendering feature, not a type of list, we should use @rend.

	Recommendations:

	Remove "ordered" as a suggested value for @type.
	Add "numbered" as a suggested value for @rend.
	Provide examples of the use of @style="list-style-type: [whatever]" to 
show the range of different numbering options available through @style 
with CSS.
	Change all instances of @type="ordered" in the Guidelines to 
@rend="numbered".
	Update processing to render list[@rend="numbered"] as HTML <ol> (and 
PDF equivalent).
	Rewrite all examples of list[@type="ordered"] in the Guidelines, along 
with associated prose, to @rend="numbered" or to use @style.

"bulleted"/"bullets": This is clearly a rendering feature, not a type of 
list.

	Recommendations:
	
	Remove "bulleted" as a suggested value for @type.
	Add "bulleted" as a suggested value for list/@rend.
	Change all examples using @type="bullets" to @rend="bulleted".
	Add processing for @rend="bulleted" to produce HTML <ul> and PDF 
equivalent.
	Add examples showing the use of @style with CSS for various bullet types.

"specList": There is only a single example of this, in the FT chapter. 
It looks odd, and I think it might be a survival from a previous 
incarnation of the chapter, since it duplicates to some extent the 
<specList> directly above it (although it does provide more detail). It 
renders with no bullets or numbers.

	Recommendation:

	Look at the possibility of eliminating this bit of the Guidelines. If 
it is retained, re-encode it with @rend="simple".

"inline": This only appears in one example, but it is clearly a 
rendering feature (in CSS terms, it means "display: inline").

	Recommendations:

	Add "inline" as a suggested value for list/@rend.
	Add processing for @rend="inline" to create inline lists in HTML and PDF.

"runon": This appears in examples in 
<http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/CO.html#COLI>, in 
conjunction with @type="ordered". It appears to be doing the same job as 
"inline" above.

	Recommendations:

	Replace rend="runon" type="ordered" with rend="inline numbered".
	Update preceding prose to clarify what "inline" means here.

"speakers", "index", "attendance", "indexentry", "encoders" "參與者" (= 
attendance), "編碼員" (= encoders): These are types of list, and appear 
only in examples. No problem here.


Cheers,
Martin


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