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Re: RE: Attribute Order (Was: Create XML )

• To: Bullard, Claude L (Len) <clbullar@i...>, 'ari@c...' <ari@c...>, xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: RE: Attribute Order (Was: Create XML )
• From: Vladimir Perlov <vladperl@s...>
• Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 10:20:38 -0400

I completely agree with Bulard that attributes have to be used only 
for technical meta information something like version, namespace 
or artificial identifier. Don't put color, height or even name to attributes. 
I believe the best way is in creating something you could name 
"Information Entity". 
For Information Entity component is good idea in creating something 
like Properties sub element and putting there names, qualifiers, 
classifiers and etc. Every component in schema will derived from 
Information Entity. The Properties sub element I would call "_property" 
(I prefer single notation). 
For me _property element is positional (structure based) element like _head or _body elements in rule markup language. For all positional elements 
I'm suggesting in using underscore. I'm trying to say that we usually 
operate semantic kind of elements and positional kind of elements. 
Element and Attribute in XML Schema for us are clearly positional elements.

Cheers,
Vladimir


> That is the explanation some advocate.  I think it is  
> brain candy for those who believe these features must 
> have some sound basis in science, math or practice. 
> IMO, attribute usage is largely stylistic and the main 
> reason the feature is preserved is to keep IDs 
> attached to the element they identify.  Other means 
> for doing that are messier.  The tacit presumption 
> is scope.
> 
> Compromises made for a particular SGML application (HTML) 
> rankled some (including me, I don't like it as a 
> rationalization), but they were politically prudent. 
> My only problem with attributes is that they are 
> often misunderstood when object-oriented backgrounds 
> are applied to markup design; thus the field/attribute 
> impedance mismatch, and when used for dumps of 
> relational dbs such that rows are elements and 
> columns are attributes. 
> 
> len
> 
> 
> From: ari@c... [mailto:ari@c...]
> 
> I'm not sure where I got it from, but I seem to have this notion that
> character data are what a human reader should see, while markup,
> including attributes, is something of a hint to software.
> 
> There are characters in a document and (meta)information about the
> characters.  Some of those metadata can be predefined, e.g.,
> html:title, and that leads to element tags; sometimes you need free
> text, such as for an href, which leads to attributes.
> 
> So I see three things - text, predefined metadata and free-form
> metadata. I can't immediately think of three more kinds of metadata
> I'd want in a document.
> 
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