[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: Services-based automation (WAS RE: Realistic proposals to the W3C?)

• From: "Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@h...>
• To: xml-dev@l...
• Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 09:03:26 -0400

Martin Bryan wrote -

 ...
>Think of your average HTML document. How much (semantic)
meaning is there in any node >label? In 99% of tags, none.
Are Word documents (even those stored as XML objects) any
>better? Or an XML-encoded Star document? No. To apply
meaning to such documents you >have to associate a
meaningful term with the node.

Actually, there can be more than meets the eye at first.
With human-to-human communication, structure can provide
quite a lot of meaning.  Just change the indentation of a
list or the order of parts of a sentence and you can easily
change the meaning, for example.  Labeling a part with <h2>
brings some intention or hint or context along with it.


>There may be more than one relevant
>term to describe the meaning. Different communities
(linguistic, cultural or  commercial) use >different terms
to identify the same meaning. You therefore need a mechanism
for >assoication multiple terms to a single node. This is
what Topic Maps do. (Unfortunately, >despite many years of
screaming on my part, Topic Maps fail to require you to
record the >meaning of the term!!)

No, I think it's good to let "meaning identification" be
optional.  You might not need the information in particular
cases.  For example, if I say that "Joe Lieberman is a
member of the Senate", you don't necessarily need
definitions for  "Senate" or "member".  Better not to
clutter up the document if you don't have to.

For the same reason, I object to requiring information
objects to be URIs in both Topic Maps and RDF.  Well, you
can fake it by using the data:  scheme (which I take to be
legal because that scheme is defined in an RFC).

Cheers,

Tom Passin

• References:
  • RE: Services-based automation (WAS RE: Realistic proposals to the W3C?)
    • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
  • Re: Services-based automation (WAS RE: Realistic proposals to the W3C?)
    • From: Jonathan Borden <jborden@m...>
  • Re: Services-based automation (WAS RE: Realistic proposals to the W3C?)
    • From: "Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@h...>
  • Re: Services-based automation (WAS RE: Realistic proposals to the W3C?)
    • From: Martin Bryan <mtbryan@s...>

• Prev by Date: Re: XML Schemas: Best Practices
• Next by Date: Re: XML Schemas: Best Practices
• Previous by thread: RDF and Topic Maps was: RE: Services-based automation
• Next by thread: Re: Services-based automation (WAS RE: Realistic proposals to the W3C?)
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread