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Re: descripton of the logical or semantic structure ?

• To: <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: descripton of the logical or semantic structure ?
• From: Norman Walsh <ndw@n...>
• Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2005 16:42:14 -0500
• In-reply-to: <20051031145838.4DA08111FB9@l...> (Michael Kay's message of "Mon, 31 Oct 2005 14:56:19 -0000")
• References: <20051031145838.4DA08111FB9@l...>
• User-agent: Gnus/5.1007 (Gnus v5.10.7) Emacs/21.4 (gnu/linux)

/ "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 beging 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.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@n...> | Besides a mathematical inclination, an
http://nwalsh.com/            | exceptionally good mastery of one's
                              | native tongue is the most vital asset
                              | of a competent programmer.--E. Dijkstra

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