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Re: patterns vs. identifiers

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: patterns vs. identifiers
• From: "Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@c...>
• Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 19:06:40 -0400
• References: <r01050300-1015-323C0B91B38E11D69F470003937A08C2@[192.168.124.21]>

[Simon St.Laurent]

>
> A table which contains cells is likely a formatting tool, while a table
> that specifies wood species and finish technique is likely furniture -
> and might even contain a table of the other kind listing the options
> available for that piece of furniture.
>

Well, you do want to remember that we have both computers and people
involved.  For people only, we want nice readable names and can make a lot
out of a little context - plus we understand about furniture when we see
"chair", etc.  For a computer, you just about need CycL to do anything
human-like with "chair", absent a schema-like something or other.

One way to see namespaces is as a single unified way to get something that
can be reasonably useful for both computers and people - identifiers that
are more or less human-readable.

> The code for this might not be easy, but I suspect it's well within the
> capabilities of XPath/XSLT, Schematron, or perhaps RELAX NG.
>
> I'm not certain that patterns alone are the answer to all problems.  On
> the other hand, I worry that identifiers are being offered as a solution
> that works formally, but is really painful in practice.
>

One of the pains is that things end up requiring both an identifier and a
readable label.  But is this really that much different from things needing
labels in different languages?  If I see a word in arabic, it is really hard
for me to read because I cannot distinguish the letters, let alone what they
group into.  If I see a chunk of RDF, I start to get lost in the URIs and
all the tags.  Is it much different?

Faced with the RDF, I want to use simple aliases so I can read it more
easily (as N3 tries to do).  Maybe this is a place for architectural forms
to bring simpification, or maybe a clever stylesheet would do the trick.

Cheers,

Tom P

• Follow-Ups:
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    • From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>

• References:
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    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>

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