[MEI-L] TEI Members Meeting report and a feature request

[Richard Lewis]

Dear Perry,

At Wed, 8 Dec 2010 16:23:05 -0500,
Roland, Perry (pdr4h) wrote:
> Date:    Sun, 5 Dec 2010 10:43:44 +0000
> From:    Raffaele Viglianti <raffaele.viglianti at KCL.AC.UK>
> Subject: Re: TEI Members Meeting report and a feature request
>
> > > TEI already provides a method for including graphics, including
> > > music; that is, <figure>.
> >
> > This is true, and it sounds to me that Peter would agree, so we have
> > this as one side of the argument. The other is that <music> provides
> > semantic sugar for <figure> in this case.
> 
> I think you mean "syntactic sugar"; that is, the substitution of a
> (hopefully) simpler way of saying something for another, (usually
> more complex) method.  But successful uses of "syntactic sugar"
> involve changing the syntax without changing the meaning.  It seems
> to me that this is not the case here.  Personally, I don't find
> anything particularly difficult with using <figure> so I fail to see
> the need for something simpler.  Without a need for simplication,
> another element that allows encoding of the same meaning is
> superfluous and causes confusion.
> 
> <music> should indeed be thought of as figure-like for technical
> reasons that have to do with where it can occur, but that doesn't
> mean it's the same thing as a figure.  To me, the use of <music>
> instead of <figure>, implies a desire to say something different and
> more meaningful (or at least at a different level of detail).  The
> approach to "syntactic sugar" you suggest only serves to obscure the
> difference that the two tags can indicate.
> 
Don't forget that, as you mentioned, the phrase used was "semantic
sugar", not your corrected (and more clichéd) "syntactic sugar". I
think that what you go on to describe fits very well Raffaele's
neologism "semantic sugar".

Best,
Richard
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Richard Lewis
ISMS, Computing
Goldsmiths, University of London
Tel: +44 (0)20 7078 5134
Skype: richardjlewis
JID: ironchicken at jabber.earth.li
http://www.richardlewis.me.uk/
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