Dear TEI'ers

I apologise if this is just me being thick, but I'm slightly
confused about the use of the 'doc' attribute in TEI <xptr>s,
and thought it better just to swallow my pride and ask rather
than suffer in silence.

The TEI Guidelines (P4X) state that:

----
The doc attribute value must be the name of an entity
declared in the document type declaration.
...
In such a case, the document type declaration must contain
a declaration for an entity containing the older text, which
might look something like this:
<!-- the 1729 Dunciad Variorum -->
<!ENTITY dunciad SYSTEM 'dunc1729.tei' >
---- (P4X, 14.2.2 - 14.2.3)

If, in an otherwise TEI conformant document, I put something like:
<xptr type="bible" doc="matthew" from="ID(idno1)" />

Where my TEI.extensions.ent file contains:

<!ENTITY matthew SYSTEM 'Matthew.xml' >

And where both files are TEI XML, and both have the same TEI.extensions.ent
file.  On validating the file in TEI Emacs, using nsgmls (with -wxml),
I get an error stating that:  "matthew" is not a data or subdocument entity.

Section 33 listing the attributes of <xptr> states that:
----
The system entity named by this attribute must be declared in
the DTD of the document containing the extended pointer. This
should be declared as an external entity (parsed or unparsed);
----

If the entity is declared as an unparsed entity, it of course
validates fine:

<!NOTATION BibleNT SYSTEM 'text/xml'>
<!ENTITY matthew SYSTEM  'Matthew.xml' NDATA BibleNT >

However, it seems somehow perverse to specify this entity as
unparsed when it is simply another XML file, not some unparseable
image or something.  All of this indicates that I'm probably just
doing/understanding something wrong somewhere, and I would gladly
have it pointed out to me.  If, in the very very unlikely case that
I'm not actually doing anything wrong, it would suggest the guidelines
should be more explicit at this point on how one declares the value of
the <xptr> attribute 'doc' so silly people like me don't get so confused.

Any suggestions appreciated,

James


--
Dr James Cummings, [log in to unmask], http://www.uea.ac.uk/~q503
Cursus Project, School of Music, University of East Anglia,
Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 7TJ, UK  Tel:(01603)593-595