Re: Another pseudo-element gotcha

Some of the thoughts behind tree-walking-by-number-alone features,
when the TEI extended pointers stuff was written, were:

--- The text you're pointing at may not be something you can change to
support the more robust mechanism of IDs and IDREFs.  It might be on a
CD, it might be on someone else's site, etc.

--- The TEI was dealing with a realm in which there are a lot of texts
that don't display the flux of Web documents.  The text of Wuthering
Heights as it was published in 1847 is a historical document that
isn't going to suddenly sprout new chapters or paragraphs (thought
it's certainly true that you may have mistranscribed it and so may
wind up making such changes).

Concerns about the robustness of the tree-walking-by-number-alone
approach are certainly justified, but, in this less-than-ideal world we
have the pleasure to deal with, it's an approach that has its uses.

John Lavagnino

Received on Monday, 14 April 1997 13:51:00 UTC