The TEI Council would like to enlist the assistance of interested parties in helping them consider the issues involved. Therefore, this is a call for volunteers to write up a short working paper on the issues surrounding the use of the new mechanism and of the previous attribute mechanism.
Is there really that much to say about it? There are two problems with the old practice (the not-Janus-practice) of which one has already been mentioned:
1.) You cannot tag attribute values any further. So you limit your own possibilities of sophisticated (that is: adequate) information (re-)coding.
2.) The point which hasn't been mentioned (on this list - I'm not subscribed to the TEI-List). The old practice is simply to supplant one theory (or notion) of text with another theory (or notion) of text. You had (for example) to decide wether to believe that text is a material object (a document --> <sic>) or an abstract entity (a linguistic event, a communication intention --> <corr>). Now - with the Janus practice - there's just pluralistic democracy of various theories / notions (or an integrative theory) of "text".
Well, there could be a third area of discussion: What is the status of an electronic text and what does the borderline between "text" and "markup" really mean (for this case)? The problem here could be, that - if you believe in the ontological discrimination of "text" and "markup" - you seem to double the portion of "text" in question. But this is no question of practical relevance and only leads to a philosophical sophistry which maybe should better be left to an even more specialised debate (and my forthcoming PhD-thesis ;-)) ...
cheers, patrick ___________________________________________________________________ Universität zu Köln Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche Informationsverarbeitung Albertus-Magnus-Platz 50923 Koeln http://www.hki.uni-koeln.de/
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