[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: Re: What are units-of-measure? e.g., what's a "kilometer"?

  • To: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@m...>, xml-dev@l...
  • Subject: Re: Re: What are units-of-measure? e.g., what's a "kilometer"?
  • From: Linda Grimaldi <grimlinda@e...>
  • Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 12:47:48 -0600 (MDT)

what s a kilometer
If my application has to be aware of "kilometer" as a property/relation/function, then it also has to be aware of "mile", "furlong", etc in the same way.  From a parsing, schema and implementation perspective, this makes things more difficult than viewing it as a value of an abstract property such as "unit".  So, in the context of the length of the Yangtze, the conventional view makes a lot of sense and the property/relation/function interpretation doesn't seem to buy you very much at first blush. 

That said, in the context of, say, a lexicon or history of measurement terms, I might want to treat it as a class itself.  In that context, kilometer itself has properties. I might be interested in the standardization body that defines it, the location of the definitive reference measure, the origin of the word, etc.  Again, context is king, which is a large part of what makes generalized semantics so difficult.

Linda

-------Original Message-------
From: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@m...>
Sent: 07/17/03 10:44 AM
To: xml-dev@l...
Subject: Re:  What are units-of-measure? e.g., what's a "kilometer"?

> 
> roger.day@g... wrote:

> I'd go for:
>
>   <River id="Yangtze">
>        <length unit="kilometer">6300</length>
>   </River>
>

If we grant that kilometer is a property/relation/function between
a distance dimension object and a number, then the choice of
representations would be:

    <River id="Yangtze">
        <length kilometers="6300"/>
    </River>

or alternatively:

    <River id="Yangtze">
        <length>
            <kilometer>6300</kilometer>
        </length>
    </River>

This is quite a radical approach.  I am surprised that there
aren't more comments, since the "conventional wisdom" is
not to treat kilometer as a property/relation/function, but rather
to treat it as the value of a property, e.g.,

  <River id="Yangtze">
       <length unit="kilometer">6300</length>
  </River>

Thoughts?  /Roger




-----------------------------------------------------------------
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 list use the subscription
manager: <http://lists.xml.org/ob/adm.pl>

> 

PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!

Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced!

Buy Stylus Studio Now

Download The World's Best XML IDE!

Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today!

Don't miss another message! Subscribe to this list today.
Email
First Name
Last Name
Company
Subscribe in XML format
RSS 2.0
Atom 0.3
 

Stylus Studio has published XML-DEV in RSS and ATOM formats, enabling users to easily subcribe to the list from their preferred news reader application.


Stylus Studio Sponsored Links are added links designed to provide related and additional information to the visitors of this website. they were not included by the author in the initial post. To view the content without the Sponsor Links please click here.

Site Map | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Trademarks
Free Stylus Studio XML Training:
W3C Member
Stylus Studio® and DataDirect XQuery ™are products from DataDirect Technologies, is a registered trademark of Progress Software Corporation, in the U.S. and other countries. © 2004-2013 All Rights Reserved.