[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Regularity: a fundamental property of declarative
On Wed, 2019-01-30 at 18:52 +0000, Costello, Roger L. wrote: > Hi Folks, > What are the properties of "declarative"? > Here's one. > Assertion #1: A key feature of declarative data is the ability of > readers (both human readers and machine readers) to recognize, at a > glance, the shape/topology of the data. i am not at all sure it is meaningful to talk about declarative data. Data does not move. It sits there glowering at people, waiting to be processed. > Assertion #2: Regularity gives data a visible/parse-able shape and > therefore regularity is a fundamental property of declarative. Well, i think Dmitre has answered this one. But i am not at all certain what yu mean by regular here, nor by discernable shapes. There are discernable shapes in the arrangement of the stars, which we call constellations, but i do not think the arrangement of the stars is declarative: or, if it declares anything, we cannot conclusively read it! > Assertion #3: Declarative is superior. Always choose declarative. What does superior mean? Different is not equal? > Conclusion: Choose regular data over irregular data. > Below is an example of regular XML-encoded data followed by an > example of irregular XML-encoded data. Here i think by regular you mean consistent. In a world in which the markup is considered primary, or where the information is under authorial control, this makes sense. If one is transcribing (say) an sixteenth-century book, one does not have liberty to rearrange text in one’s transcription and still to call the result a transcription. But that does not mean that a receipt from an electronic funds transfer is in all ways superior to the works of Shakespeare. It means it’s easier to process automatically, perhaps. Best, Liam -- Liam Quin, https://www.delightfulcomputing.com/ Available for XML/Document/Information Architecture/XSLT/ XSL/XQuery/Web/Text Processing/A11Y training, work & consulting. Web slave for vintage clipart http://www.fromoldbooks.org/
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