[tei-council] List @type musings

[James Cummings]

On 06/08/14 16:27, Martin Holmes wrote:
> I think you feel as I do, that @rend is not the way to do this; it
> should be @rendition or @style. But we're only attempting to provide a
> smooth migration path for users from the old system.

I think this is a good thing. While I'm strongly against any 
undocumented magic in ODDs and processing workflows, I think it 
is important that the TEI as a general scheme enables people to 
do this if they want to. (Can you imagine the uproar if you only 
had @rendition on <hi>?) I think recommending a set of consistent 
@rend values is useful where (and only where) those rendition 
values are clear, popular, and useful shortcuts.

> One alternative is to provide these values as a suggestion in the source
> code only, with a strong recommendation that they ONLY be used for cases
> where a project is being migrated from @type, and that all new projects
> should use @rendition/@style.

I disagree with that as a general recommendation. I do think 
@rendition is the 'right' way to do things, but believe that 
people may view it as a significant barrier to use when they just 
want a project-specific unordered bag of magic words in @rend. It 
was because I felt @rendition is the right way that I was so 
strongly against the introduction of @style (thinking that either 
you do the loose and casual way, or you do it the 'proper' way, 
not some half-way house). While I might agree that we should 
prefer @rendition in our examples and suggest that it is the 
better way to record rendition in the original, I don't think 
stipulating that only legacy migrations from @type should use 
@rend.  I realise that this is only about @type/@rend on <list> 
but since I would be so against it if generalised as a rule, I 
don't think it should be stated as such here. They should, of 
course, be encouraged to enumerate their @rend and @type values 
in their ODD so that these aren't just any values.

-James

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