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RE: Is HTML structured or unstructured information?

• To: 'Mukul Gandhi' <mukul_gandhi@y...>
• Subject: RE: Is HTML structured or unstructured information?
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@i...>
• Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 08:25:24 -0500
• Cc: xml-dev@l...

We should always question these definitions. 
Structured vs unstructured is yet another way 
to divide by categorization, and as the answers 
reveal, it isn't a very meaningful polarity. 
When you stop questioning, you stop learning. 
Practice is the acquisition of habit, not knowledge.

HTML is the example many think they understand. 
HTML is not just a presentational vocabulary.
META tags, for example, are not presentational.
FORM tags aren't strictly presentational.  Even 
DIVs aren't strictly presentational.  In fact, 
almost any tag has aspects of presentation and 
content (note I am not using the term 'semantic' 
here because presentation is a semantic). The 
principle 'separation of presentation and content' 
is flaky in practice.

XML-Dev learns by the application of XML because 
XML itself is pretty much done.

len


From: Mukul Gandhi [mailto:mukul_gandhi@y...]

Since HTML is a presentational vocabulary, it is flat
namespaced, where XML is hierarchically namespaced.
Would this mean HTML will be un-structured as reasoned
by me earlier? And XML will be structured. But I agree
with you on the point that HTML can be treated as
semi-structured. 

Is this topic worth discussing? HTML is so popular and
beautifully nice, that we should just use it :)
Probably we should discuss more about XML on xml-dev..

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Is HTML structured or unstructured information?
    • From: Philippe Poulard <Philippe.Poulard@s...>
  • Re: Is HTML structured or unstructured information?
    • From: Robert Koberg <rob@k...>

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