2) Charter numbers only as attributes: No. Please keep in mind, that my specific work regards mainly the digitisation of already printed (edited) charters as collections in charter books. There are numerous systems and ways of naming or numbering these charters. I have to bee able to keep and represent these systems. And I need the n-ATTRIBUTE to establish another, internal, global, synthetic numbering system. So I would still need a special element for these things - but I don't know how to call it. Any suggestions?
I understand your position, Patrick. Effectively, in this case, the number of the charter on the book must be between an element, because this information is in the book. In Ecole des chartes, we have a project of digitisation of cartularies edition made at the beginning XIXth. And i must confesse for the number I use <div type="numero"> ;-) It's not very good but it's the only solution we found. We considere this information makes a whole of the structure of the text. Incidentally, i use this occasion to explain quicky our project, because i think it could be interresting. We digitize in XML TEI the edition, the index and in pictures all the book with introduction. We use the METS schema (http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/) to restore in a xml file the physical structure of the book, so we can say for one page which files or part of files (JPEG, TIFF, XML) correspond. The use of METS allow to concentrate on the semantical structure in the TEI files (we use the <pb/> element to indicate the page in the TEI files) and in the physical structure in the METS files. Best wishes Gautier Poupeau