[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: When you create a markup language, what do yourparent elem
On Thu, 29 Sep 2011 13:29:22 -0600, Jim Melton <jim.melton@oracle.com> wrote: > Further to the use of XML parent and child elements for > representation of documents, I'm surprised that nobody has used the > following example: > > <paragraph>This is a sample paragraph that has some <emphasis > kind="italics">text markup</emphasis> embedded within it. > <quote>This > is a common situation</quote>, said the author.</paragraph> ... > I don't think that anybody could reasonably claim that the <emphasis> > child element has any definitive relationship to the <paragraph> > element other than simple containment. As Liam suggested, this is an > example of a parent-child relationship that has nothing to do with a > "has-a" relationship. That is, <emphasis> is not a property of the > object <paragraph> (and I find referring to <paragraph> as an > "object" > not all that helpful anyway, although it's certainly not "wrong" to > do > so). Ah, I think that is because the wrong level of markup is being used to expose the has-a. If you said <paragraph>This is a sample paragraph that has some <CONCEPT kind="italics">text markup</CONCEPT> embedded within it. <quote>This is a common situation</quote>, said the author.</paragraph> then you could certainly say "This paragraph has-a CONCEPT", in the sense that the CONCEPT is metadata that reflects some categorizing property attached to the paragraph. In that case it happens to be declared inline, but it could be declared as an attribute too: <paragraph CONCEPT="text markup">This is a sample paragraph that has some <emphasis kind="italics">text markup</emphasis> embedded within it. <quote>This is a common situation</quote>, said the author.</paragraph> In other words, if an explicit relationship is intended, then you need to move away from generic semi-presentational elements (such as emphasis) to more specific semi-semantical element names (such as CONCEPT or keyword etc.) Otherwise, all you are left with is the raw semantic of tags, that they delimit ranges of text. Cheers Rick
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