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At 02:52 PM 1/15/2002 +0100, Jens Jakob Andersen, PDI wrote:
>Hello all
>
>I think that it is fair to conclude now, that XML is _not_ any more
>selfdescribing than e.g. CSV files.
>
>Sometimes I see that we move very close to becoming guilty of "Xtreme
>Marketing Language (XML)".
Actually, Jon Bosak has always been careful to say that XML does not define
the meaning of the data. In the early days, he used to show an audience a
DTD written in Japanese and point out that the meaning of the structures it
described really aren't obvious to those who do not speak Japanese. There
are too many people in the XML world who read Japanese, so Ugaritic might
be a better choice.
The fact that meaningful names can be used in DTDs and Schemas means that
human beings often do have an idea what a DTD describes, but that means
that natural language names convey meaning, not that XML conveys meaning.
Human beins have a burning need to ascribe meaning to just about anything,
which is why we are able to read tea leaves, play slot machines, and trade
commodities.
An exercise for the reader: if an RDF Schema is written in Ugaritic, is it
any more "meaningful" than an XML Schema that describes the same data?
Please state the definition of "meaning" you are using, and how you
determine if this kind of meaning is present....
Jonathan
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