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

Fri Dec 20 16:07:48 EST 2013

On 13-12-20 12:54 PM, Paul Schaffner wrote:
> This all sounds good. With the possible exception (dare I mention it?)
> of @type="gloss".  This has always been an odd creature, as the
> unusual prose of the guidelines makes evident ("it is a semantic
> error for a list tagged with type="gloss" not to have labels.")
> I agree that @type="gloss" is a type, but it is type with stronger-
> than-usual rendering (or perhaps structural, content) implications:
> for many people it simply means "equivalent to html:dl" (even as
> @type="ordered" was shorthand for "= html:ol" and @type="simple"
> ?for = "html:ul").

That's a very good point. This is probably a candidate for a Schematron 
constraint.

Cheers,
Martin

> But I think we've clarified the guidelines enough
> on this count to pass muster.
>
> pfs
>
> On Fri, Dec 20, 2013, at 14:54, Martin Holmes wrote:
>> 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)
>> --
>> tei-council mailing list
>> tei-council at lists.village.Virginia.EDU
>> http://lists.village.Virginia.EDU/mailman/listinfo/tei-council
>>
>> PLEASE NOTE: postings to this list are publicly archived

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