Re: [xml-dev] What are units-of-measure? e.g., what's a "kilometer"?

["Rick Jelliffe" <ricko@allette.com.au>]

I don't get this at all.  When has there ever been a default semantic for
what element containment means (except in the case of text being
marked up)?  Without such a semantic, saying that any of the simple 
permutations is different doesn't make sense. 

Why not

  <km63000><Yangtze/><River/></km63000>

or

<sentence id="s1">
    <subject is-a="River">Yangtze</subject>
    <verb>has</verb>
    <object>
        <sentence id="s2">
            <subject is-a="quality">length</subject>
            <verb>is</subject</verb>
            <object>
                   <sentence is="s3">
                        <subject is-a="number">63000</subject>
                        <verb>is</verb>
                        <object is-a="metric">kilometers</object>
                    </sentence>
             </object>
        </sentence>
    </object>
</sentence>

where the rendering to English is
    s3 - "63000" is kilometers
    s2 - "length" is 63000 kilometers
    s1 - "Yangtse" River has length 63000 kilometers

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@mitre.org>
To: <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2003 2:44 AM
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] What are units-of-measure? e.g., what's a "kilometer"?


> roger.day@globalgraphics.com wrote:
> 
> > I'd go for:
> >
> >   <River id="Yangtze">
> >        <length unit="kilometer">6300</length>
> >   </River>
> >
> 
> If we grant that kilometer is a property/relation/function between
> a distance dimension object and a number, then the choice of
> representations would be:
> 
>     <River id="Yangtze">
>         <length kilometers="6300"/>
>     </River>
> 
> or alternatively:
> 
>     <River id="Yangtze">
>         <length>
>             <kilometer>6300</kilometer>
>         </length>
>     </River>
> 
> This is quite a radical approach.  I am surprised that there
> aren't more comments, since the "conventional wisdom" is
> not to treat kilometer as a property/relation/function, but rather
> to treat it as the value of a property, e.g.,
> 
>   <River id="Yangtze">
>        <length unit="kilometer">6300</length>
>   </River>
> 
> Thoughts?  /Roger
> 
> 
> 
> 
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