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Joe English wrote: > > Jonathan Borden wrote: > > > Different formats each have their advantages. The clear advantage of > > explicit tags, is that the meaning is less ambiguous. e.g. > > > > <date> > > <day>02</day> > > <month>02</month> > > <year>01</year> > > </date> > > > > vs. > > > > "02-02-01" > > In the first example, did you mean 1 CE or 2001 CE? > If the former, under which calendar should the day > and month be interpreted? I've not specified, but that isn't needed. The former example is tagged, and so the "01" may easily be interpreted with respect to the <year> element, and its associated semantics (for example a schema might tell us, or a namespace name might reference something like <div id="year"><p>Years in the Christian calender, to which 2000 is added</p></div> > > Sorry, I really don't see any decrease in ambiguity > in the first form. > Ambiguity is _decreased_ not eliminated because aside from which year we are talking about we know which lexical value is intended to represent _some year_ as opposed to _some day_. If it didn't reduce ambiguity _some_ then there would hardly be a need for XML, or SGML for that matter. Jonathan
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