Cart
|
[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Foreign Names
 At 05:20 PM 4/15/00, KenNorth wrote: > > Hmmm... very funky stuff. I'm not sure that using bizcodes would be fun, > > but it's great to see the approach. > >Bizcodes were conceived by people thinking about localization and standards >for eCommerce, but the concept has applicability across other domains. Last >year I advocated development of vocabularies by domain experts so we'd have >more accurate searches. But doesn't the idea of arbitrary numeric codes violate the spirit of XML, which was supposed to encourage human-readable and self-explanatory markup? While we may all wish for some imaginary Esperanto of markup languages that makes it easy to facilitate understanding worldwide, Bizcodes, MeSH codes, UPN codes, CLAS codes, HL7 codes, Z39.50 codes, MARC codes, ISBN codes, ICD-10 codes, DSM-IV codes, and any of thousands of other numeric systems in use around the world to classify or exchange this or that only begs the question. If one uses ICD numbers, what about people who understand DSM numbers? One has to translate between those as well. Ad infinitum. Can the majority, or even a small minority, of those on this list say that they know how all of these codes are used, their areas of applicability, and user community? Much less what a ciphered code in any one of them actually means? If you pardon the somewhat jaundiced view, how like an engineer to imagine that any numeric code will be accepted universally any more than Esperanto was. At last count, there were hundreds of artificial "universal" languages (Volapuek, Loglan, Lojban, Ido, Glosa, Interlingua, etc. ad nauseum, not to mention Pidgin and other trade languages by the score) and thousands of artificial codes for classifying and exchanging data. They all have limited user communities in which they are commonly used and vast numbers of people comprising the entire rest of the world who wouldn't know what one was if it bit them. In other words, every numeric code currently in existence behaves exactly like a language. The only advantage of a numeric code is that, within their quasi-linguistic community, they eliminate arguments among speakers of different languages about whose phonemic system and vocabulary should take precedence by sacrificing any pretext of mnemonic value. In use, they're often about as slippery and vague as any language. One of the continuing arguments between insurance companies and physicians is that the insurance companies regularly downgrade or alter diagnostic and procedural codes entered by doctors so that they pay less on the claim. There are classes one attends to learn how to code to a given purpose (dare we say rhetoric?) and thick books devoted to proper idioms in any given field. Surely it's a step backward to say that in the interest of fairness we're going to make XML-based markup languages equally incomprehensible to all. While obscurity may have been an advantage to the Oracle at Delphi, don't we have better things to do than learn jargon cleverly disguised as precision? *************************************************************************** This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers. To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@x...&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ *************************************************************************** 
|
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! 
Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|
|||||||||
