[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Embedding Content as Element Content or As An Attribute Value
Also, it seems that using an <Author> tag without a VALUe attribute makes sense if Mr. Baker isn't converting back and forth to objects at all, but is just doing something simple with authors - which I have a sneaking suspicion is all he's trying to do. Jonathan Robie wrote: > > At 09:17 AM 9/30/97 -0400, Tyler Baker wrote: > > >I would think that in these cases an "author" tag should embed its > >content as follows <author>Mr John Smith</author>, rather than how > >Microsoft CDF embeds its content which is <author VALUE="Mr John Smith" > >/>. > > I can't speak for Microsoft, but my guess is that they are simply using XML > in the manner most analogous to objects in object oriented systems. In an > object, the attributes are the data values: > > class Author > { > String name; // e.g. "Mr John Smith" > }; > > Here they have used the name VALUE in a similar way: > > class Author > { > String VALUE; // e.g. "Mr John Smith" > }; > > One very easy way to change objects into XML elements is to use one element > for each object, and use attributes to model the data members: > > <author VALUE="Mr John Smith" > >/> > > The reason attributes are better for this is that an object may have many > data members, and these are distinguished by names. The element content > only has one place to put things, and there is no name associated with it. > > >Is this simply just a design preference, or else is there a concrete > >reason why what seemingly is content should be embedded as an attribute. > > To me, Microsoft's method makes sense if what you are doing is converting > objects to XML, but your preferred method ("<author>Mr John > Smith</author>") makes more sense if you are converting objects to XML and > back. > > Jonathan > > > jonathan@t... > Texcel Research > http://www.texcel.no > > xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... > Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ > To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; > (un)subscribe xml-dev > To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; > subscribe xml-dev-digest > List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...) xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
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