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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Is HTML structured or unstructured information?
Peter Hunsberger wrote:
> On 8/11/05, Philippe Poulard <Philippe.Poulard@s...> wrote:
>
>>Peter Hunsberger wrote:
>>
>>>On 8/11/05, Philippe Poulard <Philippe.Poulard@s...> wrote:
>
>
> <snip/>
>
>>ok, let's have more info : instead of <b>, let's use <xhtml:b> (with the
>>right namespace declaration) ; one can decide that <b> is used for
>>naming of a person (why not, even if it is certainly a bad choice), but
>>one can't decide the same for <xhtml:b>, because it really stands for
>>"bold" and nothing else
>>
>>a code that respect standards will no longer decide what <xhtml:b> is for
>>
>
>
> Ok, so you agree; the <xhtml:b> has meaning? (IE; it has implied
> semantics to the "code").
all along, I take care to avoid using such terms "<xhtml:b> has meaning"
because, as I was saying in a previous post, "semantic is used for terms
that means something"
I argue that "my name is <xhtml:b>Philippe Poulard</xhtml:b>" has the
same meaning that "my name is Philippe Poulard"
to be coherent, I won't say that "<xhtml:b> means bold", I will say that
"<xhtml:b> just stands for bold", because <xhtml:b> carries no meaning
to its text data
the semantic applies on the content, not on the container : <author>
can't be an author, it can only contain a text that corresponds to a
person name that is (should be) an author
>
> <snip>
>
>>>Respectfully disagree: structure and semantics are in the eye of the
>>>beholder: tell me is a blob of XML stored in a RDB structured or not?
>>>Does the same blob have any semantic meaning? What if the RDB can
>>>parse the blob into a SOAP descriptor? What if it used a grammar
>>>stored in another blob to do so?
>>>
>>
>>if the semantic structure of a blob in an RDBMS tells that it is XML,
>>then it is structured (whether this structure is easily accessible or
>>not is another story)
>>
>>-what about reading an XML file as binary data ?
>>-what about reading the files where are stored the tables of your RDBMS
>>in a vendor-dependant binary format ?
>>
>>if you ignore the structure, you won't have structured data
>
>
> I'm missing something; what's your point?
>
semantic and structuration are just conventions ; it is also the case in
any natural language (which is not as natural as it seems)
you may find conventions at a world-wide level (standards)
you may fing conventions at a corporate level
you may fing conventions at an application level
structured and semantic informations are just where one decide to apply
them... by convention !
if you ignore one level of convention, you may loose structure or
semantic : if you give me an access point to your well-designed
database, and you omit to tell me that a given colomn contains a blob
that is XML, I will find binary datas (if I'm curious, I could try to
parse all the blobs and may find XML)
--
Cordialement,
///
(. .)
-----ooO--(_)--Ooo-----
| Philippe Poulard |
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