[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: [SML] Re: SML ?!?
On Fri, 26 Nov 1999, James Tauber wrote: > > See http://www.xml.com/pub/1999/11/sml/index.html for an article > > describing the SML idea [James] > I noted with interest (and disagreement) the technical arguments against > attributes. I had a similar feeling about the 'arguments against attributes' - I think it drew a conclusion without having engaged the matter adequately. 1. Yeah, the SGML/XML notion of an "attribute" is badly broken 2. A markup language used in part as a data modelling language certainly should be able to distinguish notationally and conceptually between an object ('element') and an attribute. 3. Just throwing out the SGML/XML attribute isn't the right solution, in my judgment. [...] > > Why? Because in *markup* there is a distinction between content and markup. > The character data content of an element is content. The value of an > attribute is markup. Attributes, like other markup, provide information in > addition to the textual content. > > For example, a person thinking how to express the fact that Max is a dog > that is black might use: > > <dog> > <name>Max</name> > <colour>black</colour> > </dog> > > However, a person wanting to markup the text "Max" indicating that he is a > black dog couldn't do the above. They might, instead, use: > > <dog colour="black">Max</dog> > > So if XML is being used for marking up existing textual content, attributes > have a definite place. Even this example, while instructive and illustrative, does not begin to address the deeper issues. For example, whatever the SGML/XML standards may say formally about "content" versus "non-content", and irrespective of whether these definitions accord well with users notions of "content" in different application domains (a HUGE usability concern), we have in TEI for example, a markup strategy for correcting a known or suspected error in some text, with sic/corr tags: I write: As Job Bosak astutely observed You encode: <p>As <corr sic="Job">Jon</corr> Bosak astutely observed (or something like this -- see TEI's mirror tags) In practice, trying to declare in advance what may be reckoned as "content" is extremely difficult (attribute value literals in some contexts but not others; most all PCDATA but not all, etc.) The definitions I've seen are break very quickly, when one considers the range of applications and users WRT SGML/XML: it's not "what is seen vs. what is not seen"; nor "what's really in the 'text' vs. what is metadata". All such distinctions I've seen are broken, and non-repairable. Especially if one is concerned to uphold the notion of a descriptive markup language as having no pre-defined application level processing semantics. -rcc 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/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; unsubscribe 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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