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Re: Is an element's name metadata?

• To: Gustaf Liljegren <gustaf.liljegren@b...>
• Subject: Re: Is an element's name metadata?
• From: Mitch Amiano <mamiano@n...>
• Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 10:06:11 -0400
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <3.0.6.32.20030625181825.00b224a8@p...>
• Organization: Software Adjuvant
• References: <3.0.6.32.20030625181825.00b224a8@p...>
• Reply-to: mitch.amiano@s...
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030507

Ok, please don't beat me about the head and shoulders if I get some history wrong but...

SGML referred to element names as Generic Identifiers; this in contrast to Specific Identifiers, such as ID type attributes. A GI is then a special case of attribute: one without an explicit name (which is not all that special a case in SGML). One might conceptually think:

<element gi="reporter">
John Smith
</element>

Incidentally, on looking over the DC site, I came across one definition:

Record: some structured metadata about a resource, comprising one or more properties and their associated values.

Under that definition both the property (name) and associated values constitute the metadata. 

Operationally, the metadata distinction may be more unhelpful than not.

Regards

- Mitch

Gustaf Liljegren wrote:

> I've heard some people say that the markup is by itself metadata, that an
> element's name is metadata, because it describes the element's content:
> 
> <reporter>    <-- This is metadata
> John Smith    <-- This is data
> </reporter>
> 
> Isn't this wrong? Comparing to what I learned from Dublin Core, metadata is
> data too. It's not just the name of a property. I'd say it's the element's
> context that decides whether <reporter> is a data or a metadata element.
> 
> <reporter>    <-- This is just the name of a property
> John Smith    <-- This may be metadata, depending on the element's context
> </reporter>
> 
> Is this the right way to think about metadata in XML?
> 
> Gustaf
> 
> 
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• References:
  • Is an element's name metadata?
    • From: Gustaf Liljegren <gustaf.liljegren@b...>

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