But, but ... I don't really speak 'ant' very well, but AFAIK DTDcmopat is a property, and it's set (to a boolean) on line 162. What I've read (e.g. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5643918/if-and-unless-in-ant) shows the property being referenced in an @if or @unless as a Name, not a variable-like-reference. In truth (as the comment on 164 says) the value of DTDcompat should probably be passed in from the caller, defaulting to "true", but set to "false" for tei_customization. (But that's a bit of a pain to do in the Makefile. :-)

I checked your changes and see that you introduced a new(?) variable ${DTDcompat} in antruntest.xml which you refer to multiple times. Crucial part is in line https://github.com/TEIC/TEI/blob/c293b6275365b5eefc60399fbec60c7879bc7ee8/P5... where the @unless=„DTDcompat“ blocks the test. One obvious thing is that the variable must be referenced by ${DTDcompat} but I have no idea where you would want to inject the proper value?

I just find the right snippet of documentation, so while I don't fully understand, I have a clue. Whether you use the property name or the reference to it depends on whether you want to test the existence of the property (which I don't) or its value; but you can only do the latter in ant 1.8.0 and later, which is why lots of web pages have examples of the former. (My confusion came from getting info from 2 different sources, which seem to have been based on different versions of ant.) I am running a local build right now, but will fix the Makefile soon. Thanks, Peter!

Ah, I see, you’re completely right!

But still, when you put @unless=„DTDcompat“ it checks whether the property is set – which is always the case (being true or false). If you want to check for the value, use ${DTDcompat}. But could it be feasible to remove the <condition> statement completely and have the property just passed in (if necessary)? Than the @unless should stay as it is …