[tei-council] Status of <attRef>

[Martin Holmes]

Hi all,

I have a very stale old ticket here:

<https://sourceforge.net/p/tei/bugs/581/>

which calls for better documentation of the <attRef> element. It got 
stalled because there was a suggestion that some of the changes being 
implemented by Lou to improve ODD independence from RelaxNG might make 
the element obsolete.

I tried to use <attRef> in one of my ODDs in April, but couldn't make it 
do what I thought it should, so I rewrote the ODD to work a different way.

In its "home" chapter, TD (Documentation Elements), the element is 
listed but never mentioned. The only bit of the Guidelines that mentions 
it is here:

<http://teijenkins.hcmc.uvic.ca/job/TEIP5/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/USE.html#IM-unified>

This suggests (although please correct me if I'm wrong) that <attRef> is 
created as an intermediate processing step when processing a complex ODD 
(i.e. it doesn't provide an example of a human using <attRef> in a real 
ODD).

I'm not sure how to proceed on this ticket at the moment, so if you can 
help by answering these questions (particularly Lou and Sebastian) I'd 
be glad:

1. Are there (currently) any good use-cases for end-users which depend 
on the use of <attRef> and which will work with current ODD processing?

2. If there are such use-cases, can the same results be achieved using 
other existing elements and attributes?

3. Will future plans for ODD make <attRef> obsolete anyway?

Cheers,
Martin