Hi Peter,
If I understand correctly, you are saying that in the following XML document:
<l>A’ was a merry man—took up the child:</l>
<l>“Yea,” quoth he, “dost thou fall upon thy face?</l>
<l>Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit;</l>
<l>Wilt thou not, Jule?” and, by my holidame,</l>
<l>The pretty wretch left crying and said “Ay.”</l>
one might want to insert additional markup around the quoted sentences. Something like this:
<l>A’ was a merry man—took up the child:</l>
<l><quote>“Yea,”</quote> quoth he,
<quote>“dost thou fall upon thy face?</l>
<l>Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit;</l>
<l>Wilt thou not, Jule?”</quote> and, by my holidame,</l>
<l>The pretty wretch left crying and said
<quote>“Ay.”</quote></l>
Is that the idea?
I can see how that is a problem for XML. XML does not allow start-tag/end-tag pairs that are not properly nested.
So the overlapping problem is this: Sometimes it's desirable to allow start-tag/end-tag pairs that are not properly nested.
Is that right?
Truthfully, the concept of allowing start-tag/end-tag pairs that are not properly nested doesn't seem like, in the universe of data concepts, a hugely important concept. I guess that I am not seeing its importance.
Are there data concepts that are not expressible by XML and are hugely important concepts?
By the way, here is the URL to Jeni's blog article:
http://www.jenitennison.com/2008/12/06/overlap-containment-and-dominance.html
/Roger
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