Sylvain LOISEAU wrote:
> Your definition of conformance on http://www.tei-c.org.uk/wiki/index.php/Conformance is perfectly clear: while it may be seen as liberal, it defines conformance only with respect with element /grammar/, not element /usage/. And you explicitly stated latter that the element usage is not interesting, providing element grammar is correct. This is a major reduction of what "conformance" mean.
I agree, this is a serious problem. But what can we do? We have no
mechanistic way of checking for tag abuse
or appropriate encoding depth. I think "conformance" is *one* of the
preconditions for being a Good TEI Text.
If I get some money to encode a text, my funder may say that I must
produce a GTT, and they may appoint
a reviewer. I would expect that reviewer to a) check that I conform to
the TEI, and b) check (by human inspection)
that my encoding meets current academic norms. It would surely be
surprising if they *only* did b)?
> If one choose a new set of elements, which cannot be "mapped" to existing one with <equiv> element, but are correctly and finely documented in the Header, why should he been told less conformant than someone who has not this need?
I am regarding "conformance types" as being an unordered set, so the
word "less" is not appropriate.
Syd has used the word "degrees" in that wiki page, which I think is a
bit unfortunate as it may
reintroduce the ordering; the point is that that there are different
_ways_ to be conformant
(or "interchangeable" if you prefer not to use the C-word), it is not
a binary divide. In your example, the project is TEI Conformant
according to Type 3 rules - its just
hard to find names for these types.
> And in fact I don't see why some people can not benefit from the TEI only because it is a clear list of features and it provides immediate good suggestions, because they are sure not to choose element names that will conflict with new elements if they extend vocabulary, because they can create a header, etc., and who produce document validating only against somewhere hacked schemas, providing they are documenting their choice.
I don't disagree at all. I think its a perfectly fine use of the work
that has gone into the TEI. However, wearing its
other hat as a pseudo-standard, the TEI must address conformance.
> Of course it is certainly not sufficient to be said conformance, but it is, as far as I can see, real practices. What is the statut of this usage of the TEI? That's why I entirely agree with the point of view of Wendell Piez not to see the TEI as XHTML 1.1, but rather as HTML
that passes the buck. Yes, the TEI project overall is like HTML, but at
some point we commit ourselves
to a real proposed schema, be it XHTML 1.1 or TEI P5, and we want that
to have a precise meaning.
> HTML has fit the need of numerous people and encourage them to create a new practice (while XHTML has never prove to have many more than a theoretical benefit, since no eXtension (which was the goal) have ever appear on browsers: no SVG, nor SMIL, etc., but it is another subject).
hmm. SVG embedded in XHTML works fine in my browser :-}
>
> ... I think that documentation of practice (element usage) is at least as important for perenity than documenting element grammar. Why conformance should be defined regarding only the latter?
>
because the latter cannot be formally coded at present.
Think of buildings. There are ISO standards for millions of the components
in buildings, all of which it is sensible to meet. No sane engineer or
architect would reinvent the basic wheels. Yet there are good and bad
buildings, because some have better engineers or more visionary architects.
Thats absolutely fine. You don't say "this is a good building because it
meets ISO standards", but equally you (seldom) say "this is a great
building but it does not satisfy any standards".
--
Sebastian Rahtz
Information Manager, Oxford University Computing Services
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431
OSS Watch: JISC Open Source Advisory Service
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk
|
