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Re: When you create a markup language, what do yourparent elem

• From: Liam R E Quin <liam@w3.org>
• To: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>
• Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2011 22:09:49 -0400

On Mon, 2011-09-26 at 08:54 -0400, Costello, Roger L. wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> 
> How do you define a parent element and its children?

> Recap: here are two ways of defining the meaning of markup:
> 
> 1. Object-property
> 2. Functional definition
> 
> What other ways are there? 

What is this thing called "meaning" of which you speak?

One fundamental difference between GML and XSLT is that GML is a
modeling language. Other XML vocabulary types include transcription
languages (TEI), document-writing languages (docbook, mallard),
event-logs (HTTP access, bird-watching reports), constraint languages,
graphical languages, formatting languages, XML-based protocols (xmlrpc,
SOAP, WDT [1]) and much more.

Some languages use the parent-child relationship to signify something
beyond parent-child or "has-a" and some do not.  My feeling is that most
do not, in fact.

Similarly, followed-by can be significant, and often is, but also often
is not. War and Peace is a lot to read in any order, but makes most
sense in original document order. Dhalgren makes no sense in any
order :-)

XSLT uses lexical containment (parent-child) as a scoped block; a
graphical language might use containment as an implicit clipping or
grouping.

There's no general rule.

Liam

[1] "SOAP - Where's The Dirt?"

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org

• References:
  • When you create a markup language, what do your parent elementsmean? What do your children elements mean?
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>