brad said:
Detractors of XML on this list have brought up the fact that the TEI manual is 1400 pages long as a negative. Why?
actually, it was jeroen who initially mentioned that fact. but since you asked, the reason this is seen as a "negative" is because we think that precious few of the volunteers who have traditionally shouldered the effort of creating e-texts will continue to do so if an understanding of those 1400 pages of t.e.i. documentation were to become a prerequisite. but maybe now distributed proofreaders has enough people on-board that they feel less uncomfortable taking that risk... or maybe not, as their tentative plan thus far involves adding two "markup" rounds (at least, and maybe more) to their existing two "proofing" rounds, so as to minimize the number of people who need to be concerned with markup.
This shows that TEI is well documented.
um, well, yes, i guess it does. although _more_ documentation is not _always_ a good sign of _better_ documentation, is it?
As a general rule, the more documentation that is available for a spec the more mature and useful the standard and the easier it is to learn and implement.
i'm not quite so sure i agree with that "general rule", brad... i think it would be just as possible -- and more compelling -- to formulate a "general rule" that the more documentation that a spec needs, the more complex it is, which means that it is _harder_ to "learn and implement"... i'm not afraid of documentation. indeed, quite to the contrary, i'm one of those rare people who often prefers reading it _first_, because if you can stomach it, it'll save you lots of fiddling time. and i'm a word geek too. so i find the massive t.e.i. documentation -- and indeed the whole framework itself -- to be a remarkable and fascinating piece of work. it is mind-boggling to witness how _complex_ and _variegated_ a comprehensive examination of text can become, once you pour a foundation and start building a building. on the other hand, i can equally admire a system that boils things down to their essence, and creates great benefits with few costs. if all the volunteers contributing their efforts to project gutenberg were word geeks as willing to throw themselves into a devotion of documentation, like you and me, brad, it might not matter whether we went with the complex system or one that is a lot more easy. but given that they probably aren't, we should think very carefully before committing them to a world with a high degree of difficulty. as you put it, the learning of a complex system like t.e.i. is often "a gradual process of incremental epiphanies". can we _survive_ the situation where thousands of volunteers are put through that? with perhaps many becoming alienated in the course of doing so? unless i miss my guess, just the last few days of "how do we do this?" posts on this listserve have tried the patience of most subscribers... (which leads me to suggest that perhaps there is another listserve that is more appropriate for that, where the markup geeks can go?) -bowerbird