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The meeting must start before it ends ...... Wow! That has deepmeaning,

• From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>
• To: "xml-dev@lists.xml.org" <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
• Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2015 12:26:21 +0000

Hi Folks,

Here is some data about a meeting:

<Meeting>
    <start-time>2015-02-26T08:00:00</start-time>
    <end-time>2015-02-26T09:00:00</end-time>
</Meeting>

The start time must be before the end time.  .......... Is that a statement about semantics?

The DOT reference manual says that "the keywords node, edge, digraph, subgraph, and strict are case insensitive." .......... Is that a statement about semantics?

Which of the following are true:

(a) The statement that "the meeting's start time must be before the end time" is a statement about semantics.

(b) The statement that "the keywords are case insensitive" is a statement about semantics.

(c) The statement that "the meeting's start time must be before the end time" is a statement about a data relationship (a co-constraint), it has nothing to do with the semantics of the meeting.

(d) The statement that "the keywords are case insensitive" is a statement about how a lexer should tokenize the DOT language, it has nothing to do with the semantics of the keywords.

(e) We spend too much time worrying about whether something should or shouldn't be labeled "semantics".

(f) We should stop using the word "semantics" since nobody can agree to what it is.

/Roger

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: The meeting must start before it ends ...... Wow! Thathas deep meaning, right?
    • From: Frank Manola <fmanola@acm.org>
  • Re: The meeting must start before it ends ...... Wow! Thathas deep meaning, right?
    • From: Tei <oscar.vives@gmail.com>