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Re: The meeting must start before it ends ...... Wow! Thathas

• From: Frank Manola <fmanola@acm.org>
• To: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@mitre.org>
• Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2015 12:59:33 -0500

Roger—

It would clarify things if you distinguished:

a)  "the start time must be before the end time”

and

b)  “the value of the <start-time> element must [bear the appropriate relation to] the value of the <end-time> element”.

The former is (sort of) about the semantics of “start” and “end”.  The latter is about the syntax of an expression.


> On Feb 26, 2015, at 7:26 AM, Costello, Roger L. <costello@mitre.org> wrote:
> 
> 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
> 
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• References:
  • The meeting must start before it ends ...... Wow! That has deepmeaning, right?
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>