On 12 Mar 2010, at 18:10, Wendell Piez wrote:

>
> But to my mind this doesn't make it quite "descriptive" either, at
> least if we mean descriptive in the purer sense to which the TEI
> generally aspires -- i.e., descriptive of the source data, rather
> than of its behavior in application.

TEI does far more than describe the source data, all the time, surely?
in that it provides many tools for editorial annotation. What <zone>
provides is another method of standoff markup, saying that
"all the text in this area here" is of interest for some reason. I  
think you're
tying it too closely to a software application.

"without incurring the costs of a standardization process,
with all that entails."

you talk as if standardization is  a _bad_ thing, some
sort of un-American activity :-}
--
Sebastian Rahtz
Information Manager, Oxford University Computing Services
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431

Sólo le pido a Dios
que el futuro no me sea indiferente