Re: Attributes v Elements

[Eric van der Vlist <vdv@dyomedea.com>]

Duane Nickull wrote:

> An Element is used for capturing a Noun, capable of standing alone as a
> noun.
> 
> An Attribute is an Adjective,  describing something unique about the
> instance of the noun (element) and would not normally appear in your
> document by itself without the associated noun (element).

This rule sounds nice, but I wonder where it comes from (I don't
remember anything of that tone in the recommendation) and if the
restrictions on elements do not alter it.

What if your adjective has a structure and needs mixed content ?
What if your adjective can have several values ?
What if the order between your adjectives is significant ?

If we were designing a new markup language, it would be fine to define
this as a rule that would facilitate the extraction of statements from
the markup (RDF would probably have been simpler with such a rule).

We have to deal with the design of XML 1.0, though, and the differences
between elements and attributes are much more pragmatic than this !

My 0,02 Euros.

Eric

> 
> Duane Nickull
> CTO, XML Global Technologies
> *************************************************
> http://www.xmlglobal.com
> *************************************************
-- 
See you in Berlin for XML Europe 2001:
     http://gca.org/attend/2001_conferences/europe_2001/tutorialsmon.htm
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric van der Vlist       http://xmlfr.org            http://dyomedea.com
http://xsltunit.org      http://4xt.org           http://examplotron.org
------------------------------------------------------------------------