[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: more on "subelement signicance"
It is still *useful* in that it is a well-formed construction independent of position in the tree or location in a document or namespace. That is of limited use but real. It might require extra-XML knowledge for example, but spiders that troll the net doing indexing might only care about meta tags (again, limited but possible). So cases exist for which simply knowing <a href="stuff" > is useful. Context is usually important but the rule as stated is too narrow. len -----Original Message----- From: Seairth Jacobs [mailto:seairth@s...] In an off-list conversation with John Cowan, he had suggested that it was entirely possible to look for an <xhtml:a> if you were aware of the namespace, regardless of what the document actually was. In return, I argued that the knowledge of the namespace was a sort of validation process that told you more about the element than the element itself tells. In the end, I came up with the following statement: "The usefulness of any given subelement is directly proportional to the the knowledge of its context. This can either be through an understanding of the namespace the element is in or by an understanding of its relationship to its parent element." In response, John noted: "No. Usefulness may require *some* context or *full* context, depending on the meaning of the element and the purpose of looking for it. 'Directly proportional' is far too strong a claim." He did, however, more or less agree with the second sentance. So taking this into account, what about the following "improved" statement? The usefulness of any given subelement is due to the knowledge of its namespace, document type, and/or parent element. Without any of the three, the subelement does not have a useful meaning. Thoughts? --- Seairth Jacobs seairth@s... ----------------------------------------------------------------- The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org <http://www.xml.org>, an initiative of OASIS <http://www.oasis-open.org> The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription manager: <http://lists.xml.org/ob/adm.pl>
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