On 25/08/11 08:14, Wendell Piez wrote:
> * "Blind interchange" at present, or even something more like it, is
> hindered by the permissiveness and size of the current TEI-all tag set
> (all the 550-odd elements in the http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0 namespace).
>
> Mind you, I am not saying it would be easy in any case. But I don't
> think things have to be as difficult as they are in TEI, either.
>

> In brainstorming mode, what I'm essentially suggesting is that [this]
> problem can be dealt with by deploying a much more constrained tag set
> specifically to meet the interchange requirement (if not perfectly, then
> at least better than at present). 
Perhaps I've missed your point, but isn't the problem that there are 
many such interchange requirements? There are potentially a number of 
communities with their own distinct markup conventions (which may or may 
not be formalised as a schema which is a proper subset of TEI-all).

To my mind what those communities need is to make those formal schemas 
(using Roma), and what the Consortium can do is to help to crystallise 
those community's conventions as schemas by organising discussions, and 
providing the technical expertise of the Council to help with the 
process. Alongside the existing Roma, it would be helpful for the 
Consortium to commission or curate a suite of XSLT transforms which can 
be used to convert instances of richer schemas to a more restrictive 
schema. These transforms would correspond to the familial relationships 
between schemas, and together would delineate a kind of class hierarchy 
of schemas.

> And if such a tag set (plus constraint set) were ready, it could be
> blessed with a TEI namespace tomorrow. A distinct namespace would make
> the boundaries clear for both users and developers, while allowing a
> clean separation for processing. 
I would put in a plea NOT to "bless" such tag sets (schemas) with a 
distinct namespace. Unless such a schema were incompatible with TEI-all 
(i.e. the terms in the vocabulary may be used in ways which violate the 
grammar of TEI-all), then I think it's much simpler not to duplicate the 
vocabulary in another namespace.

> One of the ways to foster interchange
> is by dramatizing when the constraints that guard it are violated. At
> present, it is too easy to say "well it's valid to TEI-all" and put the
> problem off for another day.
I couldn't agree more!

-- 
Conal Tuohy
eResearch Business Analyst
Victorian eResearch Strategic Initiative
+61-466324297