I've been thinking about our discussion of incompatibilities between tei
and xhtml, and especially Sabastian's point that commerical browsers are
not xml-neutral in the sense that they expect html tags like <img>
rather than tei tags like <figure>.

I wonder if it would it be worthwhile (or possible) to design a
'tei-lite' that incorporated what we for want of a better word might
call the necessary html "operational" tags like <img> in anotherwise tei
tagset. Perhaps better described as "tei-hybrid" this set would allow
users to code directly for browsers and CSS style.

I can see an obvious philolosphical objection: the resulting packet
would not be valid tei and hence would affect document exchange and
interoperability. I can also see an obvious practical objection: xslt
already exists to transform tei-xml to xhtml. But, especially in the
case of incompatibilities between tei and xhtml like paragraph internal
block quotes, one solution might be to keep the tei whenever possible
and only transform the bits that work otherwise work in a browser.

Ideas?
-dan



--
Daniel Paul O'Donnell, PhD
Associate Professor of English
University of Lethbridge
Lethbridge AB T1K 3M4
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