Re: [tei-council] Recommendations on values of @xml:id (FR #540)

Just wanted to add two issues I find very important concerning IDs (and which were not mentioned yet — please excuse if it was): * IDs should not change. Hence, there should nothing be encoded within the ID because everything can be subject to change. To illustrate this point I found this nice one from Tim Berners Lee: „Cool URIs don't change“ [1]. I think it’s legitimate to put URI = xml:id, here. * I’d even add a check digit [2] to my IDs Best Peter [1] http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_digit

Am 20.02.2015 um 23:42 schrieb Martin Holmes :

On 15-02-20 02:23 PM, Hugh Cayless wrote:

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+1. Is it worth having a paragraph in the GLs discussing the issue without making recommendations?

I agree with both points: don't recommend, but do discuss briefly a range of possible options.

I don't like random ids, because they're extremely difficult to keep in mind for any length of time. Semi-meaningful ids (FRED1, LOND47) are certainly not useful for sorting or sequencing, but when you need to type them into a search or type a few of them, they're much easier to deal with.

Cheers, Martin

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On Feb 20, 2015, at 17:07 , Raffaele Viglianti wrote:

Hi all,

Martin Mueller asked on the list for recommendations on good uses of xml:ids, which resulted in a good discussion and a FR.

I summarized the main suggestions on the ticket on SourceForge, but I post them here as well because I think we need to discuss this further, see below.

The Guidelines already have some recommendations (numbering based on doc structure):

* The Guidelines already suggest numbering based on doc structure ( http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/CO.html#CORS2) * Use 3 letters (e.g. from the title)+ 3 digits, incremental. E.g. HOL001, HOL002, etc.. * Same as above, but no fix number of digits. E.g. HOL1, HOL2, etc. * Prefix an id with name of element (this is simpler version of what the Guidelines already recommend) * Give tei:TEI an id and prefix every other id in the document with it (to guarantee cross-corpus uniqueness)

These are all reasonable suggestions and there can be plenty more - which is why I think that the TEI should *not* give any recommendation on best practices for xml:id because it's a project management issue, not an encoding one.

Myself, I prefer random ids, a practice that avoids introducing yet another level of complexity and data management. I understand the human readability, but sequences are too easily broken. And when parsing, relying on ID content instead of TEI content sounds like a bad idea. -- tei-council mailing list tei-council@lists.tei-c.org http://lists.lists.tei-c.org/mailman/listinfo/tei-council

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