On the need for intra-value order in @rend (and friends) ... I think it is *absolutely necessary* that people be allowed to consider the order of things inside @rend to be relevant: 1) for consistency (important) 2) for processing (important) 3) for expressivity (very important, if not necessary) 4) to continue to support existing TEI projects (politically required) (1) for consistency --- --- ----------- The difference between @rend and @style is that the latter is expressed in a style definition language declared in <styleDefDecl> (and typically CSS), whereas the former is project-defined. Very clearly on @style order matters. As a simple (and stupid) example, consider style="font-size: 50%; font-size:200%;" vs style="font-size: 200%; font-size:50%;" Since order can matter inside @style, order should matter inside @rend (unless, of course, the project-specific system does not care about order, and then it doesn't). (2) for processing --- --- ---------- It is quite reasonable that a stylesheet would try to ascertain the rendition of an element by assembling the various bits that talk about its rendition in the right order.[1] If they are assembled and read L to R, the processor need not worry about repetition of certain features, as long as something read later overrides what is specified earlier. But this processing model would become weird if the processor had to think of the bits specified on @rend is not in order, whereas everything else is in order. (BTW, I'm not suggesting this is the only processing model one could use, only that it is one we should not deliberately make more difficult.) (3) for expressivity --- --- ------------ Let's say I've made up my own language for the content of <rendition> and the value of @rend, and that I've chosen to express delimiters as renditional features, not transcribed characters. (And note, both of these things are true at the WWP.) So the stage direction "[Aside]" becomes <stage rend="startDelim='[', endDelim=']'">Aside</stage> If the word "Aside" were in italics, I would have something like <stage rend="startDelim='[', endDelim=']', italics">Aside</stage> But what if the the square brackets were also in italics? Then <stage rend="italics, startDelim='[', endDelim=']'">Aside</stage> could be used to assert that. What if only the ending square bracket were in italics? Then <stage rend="startDelim='[', italics, endDelim=']'">Aside</stage> So order is really helpful, if not required, to express what was on the page. (And yes, this system would require a keyword for "not in italics" to express that the starting square bracket and "Aside" were in italics, but the closing square bracket was not.) (4) to continue to support existing TEI projects --- -- -------- -- ------- -------- --- -------- Any project that uses the WWP "rendition ladder" system (for which there is some software support, although not much; and which was adopted, over my mild objection, as a best practice by the TEI in Libraries task force) requires that the pieces of @rend not be thought of as space-separated tokens, and that order be significant. Period. Notes ----- [1] I would say "the right order" is: * content of <rendition>s selected by their @select, in document order * content of <rendition> selected by a <tagUsage> that points to it * content of <rendition> selected by an applicable @rendition * value of @style * value of @rend but we can worry about that detail later.