Since I'm a "universalist" with regards to @type, this would get my vote 
anyway ;)

But despite that, I'm not sure it solves the problem: @type isn't the 
kind of att that I'd use for meta-information about the content of the 
tag. I see it more as a way of subdividing the semantic range of the 
element. edition/@type="candidateRecommendation" or 
edition/@type="deprecated" doesn't seem to me to be a semantic 
subdivision in the way that edition/@type="digitalTranscription" | 
edition/@type="originalPrint" might be. In the first case I've really 
talking about status rather than type of edition; in the second I'm 
specifying specific types of edition rather than commenting on their status.

Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> could we simply make <edition> take the @type attribute?
> would that be simpler than a new attribute?
>

-- 
Daniel Paul O'Donnell
Associate Professor of English
University of Lethbridge

Chair and CEO, Text Encoding Initiative (http://www.tei-c.org/)
Co-Chair, Digital Initiatives Advisory Board, Medieval Academy of America
President-elect (English), Society for Digital Humanities/Société pour l'étude des médias interactifs (http://sdh-semi.org/)
Founding Director (2003-2009), Digital Medievalist Project (http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/)

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Home Page: http://people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odonnell/