[tei-council] note in sourceDesc

[James Cummings]

On 12/03/14 17:57, Martin Holmes wrote:
> I think dropping DTDs would mean a move to P6. Lots of people still use
> them, and will complain if they disappear from P5.

We've never added it to our list of thoughts about things that 
might need P6 at http://wiki.tei-c.org/index.php/P6-dev

There is a difference between us stopping to cater for DTDs 
inherently in our releases and making it impossible to generate a 
DTD from the (potentially lossy) Relax or W3C Schemas.  I'd like 
ODD to be able to document our intention of how we are using the 
TEI even in cases where that is unable to be expressed in any 
current schema language.

> Whether the Pure ODD stuff justifies a P6 would depend on whether we
> actually made use of that functionality in the standard. If we ourselves
> define two separate content models for <p>, one for the header and one
> for <text>, then I think the backward-compatibility problem would be
> significant enough to warrant a change. If we just provide this
> functionality for customizers to use themselves, then it wouldn't.

Yes, that is what I mean, if EpiDoc, for example, then decided to 
make use of it for their community then that isn't a problem, 
likewise if Lou decides to use it for a project -- as long as 
what they are doing, of course, provides a pure subset. ;-)

> So we could envisage a process where we put the changes in place to
> support this, in the existing P5 universe, without using it ourselves;
> then when we come to P6, we can take full advantage of it to build a
> more sophisticated document model.

By 'using it ourselves' you mean enforcing it in tei_all? Not 
doing that, but allowing it in stricter customisations seems fine 
to me. (i.e. if it is allowed in tei_all then we aren't breaking 
backwards compatibility yes.... customisations have always been 
free to remove elements from content models and rewrite them as 
tighter subsets.)

-James

-- 
Dr James Cummings, James.Cummings at it.ox.ac.uk
Academic IT Services, University of Oxford