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RE: descripton of the logical or semantic structure ?

• To: "'Norman Walsh'" <ndw@n...>,<xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: descripton of the logical or semantic structure ?
• From: "Michael Kay" <mike@s...>
• Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2005 22:08:24 -0000
• In-reply-to: <87irvds6rt.fsf@n...>
• Thread-index: AcXeZEN4ej7Wv6f3T/ucYK6eV7VPWAAArJCQ

> / "Michael Kay" <mike@s...> was heard to say:
> | The XML specification does not use the term "semantic 
> structure". It uses
> | the word "semantic" twice:
> |
> | (a) to say that it does not constrain the semantics of elements and
> | attributes, other than those whose names beginning with "xml"
> |
> | (b) in 3.3.1, to say that the tokenized attributes such as 
> ID, IDREFS "have
> | varying lexical and semantic constraints".
> |
> | These two statements are unfortunately contradictory, but 
> then it's unusual
> | to find two uses of the word "semantics" that attach the 
> same meaning to the
> | word.
> 
> Indeed. I expect we can clarify that a bit. XML allows a document
> (actually a document type definition) author to impose some lexical
> and semantic constraints on attributes (by giving them the types ID,
> IDREF, IDREFS, ENTITY, ENTITIES, or NOTATION). But in that case, it
> isn't XML that makes the constraints, it's the DTD author.


I think that what has actually happened here is that the first extract is
using "semantics" the way it is used when discussing natural languages: it
means "meaning" or "information content". The second extract is using
"semantics" the way it is used in programming languages: it means "rules
beyond those in the grammar".

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

• References:
  • Re: descripton of the logical or semantic structure ?
    • From: Norman Walsh <ndw@n...>

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