The type attribute on div
div
The TEI Guidelines deliberately do not provide any suggested values for type on div, recognizing the fact that useful values will vary immensely from project to project, depending on the materials being encoded. There are several issues to consider when deciding on a value list for your project:
- values should be mutually exclusive
- values should represent clearly distinguishable forms. If you don’t think you will be able to reliably distinguish between two possible kinds of subdivision, then it may make more sense to group them together under one value.
- the terms you use should be mnemonic and reasonably comprehensible to someone outside your project. It is better (for training purposes, for data exchange, and for long-term comprehensibility) to use values like section, poem, and chapter rather than sct, pm and ch, let alone dweezel or n0020.
- you may wish to use values defined by other projects working in the same general area, or values from a relevant thesaurus, to avoid unnecessary idiosyncrasy.
- you may find it useful to have one or two values which indicate uncertainty, either temporary or permanent, about the nature of the subdivision. This approach is helpful because it reduces the likelihood that encoders will use an incorrect value when they are not sure how to categorize a subdivision. A value like undetermined might be used to indicate that you have not yet decided what type of division this is, and another value like indeterminate might be used to indicate that you do not feel the division can be assigned to any particular category. If you do not plan to go back and research undetermined values then using this distinction is probably unnecessary.
In all cases, you should make an effort to arrive at a reasonably final value list before you do any substantial encoding. Changing the specific terms used (e.g. changing verse to poem) is not difficult, but reexamining the boundary between preface and foreword might be burdensome. Finally, your value list should be clearly documented.