Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: T. Nelson -- Doesn't understand XML?

Author:Samuel Reynolds
Posted:11/10/1999; 9:22:35 AM
Topic:T. Nelson Critique of Embedded Markup
Msg #:12924 (In response to 12919)
Prev/Next:12923 / 12925

>> If I have an XML tag for Price, it makes no sense for you to remove that tag and replace it with Weight.

Unfortunately IMHO this argument is wrong. Nelson's point is that the semantics of the tags are external and therefore it doesnt make sense to embed them in the text stream. Your example is actually nearly perfect. Let me change it around a little bit to illustrate. Suppose you have an XML tag for Zonde, it does make perfect sense to replace it with Sin (if you're Dutch) or Waste (again, if you're dutch) or with Work Detail (if you're german) or with Sunday (if you're Swedish). The meaning of the XML fragment did not change for the person making the change, under their interpretation. The interpretation *is* external, hence it doesn't make sense to have the tags embedded.

I think you miss the point. In your counter-example, you are changing the name of the tag, but you aren't changing its meaning. In effect, you're creating tag aliases. This is completely different from re-tagging the text.

Changing "This action may result in data loss" to "This action may result in data loss" to "This action may result in data loss" doesn't change the meaning of the message. (Though you might want to translate the message to Spanish or German, as well.)

In this case "caution", "cuidad", and "vorsicht" are simply different versions of the same tag--aliases, if you will. (If I got the tenses wrong, please excuse me; I'm a native speaker of English, not Spanish or German, and this is for illustrative purposes only.)

If, on the other hand, the tag is removed entirely, and the text is re-tagged to read "This action may result in data loss", the *meaning* of the text is changed.

So in the case of XML, if applied strictly for purposes of imparting significance rather than for displaying structural emphasis, the markup is part of the information, and cannot be removed from the text stream without changing its meaning.

Just my $.02.

- Sam

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