On <eop> and <eol>

[Fabio Vitali <fabio@cs.unibo.it>]

Dear all, 

there has been in the past week an on-and-off discussion on the semantics and syntax of elements <eop> and <eol>. 

Currently the semantics of <eop> and <eol> are to identify the end of page (and respectively end of line) as markers, i.e., by their mere presence at a given position. Therefore, they are placed nearest the end of the page and line according to the reference copy in printed form, and there is the assumption that the corresponding beginning of page and line are immediately after the previous <eop> and <eol> elements. 

Additionally the syntax of <eop> and <eol> allows to add two attributes. The first parameter is breakat, that specifies the number of characters within the next word that the page (or line) actually breaks at. This allows in-word bearks to happen even if the word is not actually broken in the XML. The second parameter is number, which allows to specify a page number or line number for the element, especially if we did nit start at zero (which may happen if the document belongs to a container, e.g. a gazette or something). 

Daniel Bennett has objected that a mechanism to identify the start of the page/line, as well as its end, is appropriate, and that for it one could use some form of indirect reference, such as the use of an XPointer or another pointer-like syntax to be determined. 

The addition of yet another attribute is not a great complexity, and can be done quite easily. I am only perplexed about its need. The justification for such attribute, is for situations in which the beginning of the page/line is NOT immediately following the end of the previous page/line, but may happen somewhere else. I have not yet met such a situation. If there is a situation is which this happens, then I am more that happy to add the new attribute, but I would appreciate an example. 

So if you do have such an example, please share it with the rest of the group, and we will make sure to have a new attribute in these elements. 

Thanks and ciao

Fabio



--

Fabio Vitali                            Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly,
Dept. of Computer Science        Man got to sit and wonder "Why, why, why?'
Univ. of Bologna  ITALY               Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land,
phone:  +39 051 2094872              Man got to tell himself he understand.
e-mail: fabio@cs.unibo.it         Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), "Cat's cradle"
http://vitali.web.cs.unibo.it/