[tei-council] note in sourceDesc

[Martin Holmes]

On 14-03-12 11:14 AM, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> I am unsure whether I believe in
>
>     a) have a system for different content models for <p> in header and in text
> or
>     b) making a new element for the header
>
> i incline to both. i.e.it is good to get a) working for when we need it, but
> actually I don’t think its the right answer here, we need the neutral
> “text container” element for use in the header.

We already have <ab> for that, I think. The situation presumably is that 
people feel they are writing in paragraphs, or should be able to do so, 
not in "anonymous blocks", even when they're writing in the header.

> Allowing <note>
> just obfuscates matters further in my book, by diluting <note>
> to a catchall container with no real semantics at all.

I have some sympathy with this. At the same time, I do tend to like more 
elements to be available in more places as a general principle.

> BUT if we went to not having <p> in the header, and dropping DTDs,
> we’d be in serious trouble with our users. Declaring backward incompatible
> P6 effectively forks the TEI, and might double the maintenance.

It's no different from moving from P4 to P5: there's a new version, 
we're mainly focused on developing that, and we do maintenance update to 
the old one for a specified period of time. Meanwhile, encouraging 
people to move away from DTDs is doing them a favour, but no-one is 
required to. I still have one P4 project that works fine, and I'm not 
planning to migrate it in the near future.

> So I vote for
>   * doing nothing here, Lou’s <note> is just sticking plaster on a weeping sore
>   * recommending people use Schematron to constrain <p>

This is the key, really. Very few users know that the Schematron exists, 
and even fewer know how to write it. It's difficult to know how to 
overcome this, because it requires XPath skills, and I can't imagine any 
sort of easy-peasy Roma interface that would make it accessible to novices.

>   * working towards a solution whereby we have a separate <p>
> 	for the header, with different semantics and content model,
> 	but actually call it <p> :-}

Yes, definitely.

Cheers,
Martin
> --
> Sebastian Rahtz
> Director (Research) of Academic IT
> University of Oxford IT Services
> 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431
>
> Não sou nada.
> Nunca serei nada.
> Não posso querer ser nada.
> À parte isso, tenho em mim todos os sonhos do mundo.
>