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If my application has to be aware of "kilometer" as a property/relation/function, then it also has to be aware of "mile", "furlong", etc in the same way. From a parsing, schema and implementation perspective, this makes things more difficult than viewing it as a value of an abstract property such as "unit". So, in the context of the length of the Yangtze, the conventional view makes a lot of sense and the property/relation/function interpretation doesn't seem to buy you very much at first blush.
That said, in the context of, say, a lexicon or history of measurement terms, I might want to treat it as a class itself. In that context, kilometer itself has properties. I might be interested in the standardization body that defines it, the location of the definitive reference measure, the origin of the word, etc. Again, context is king, which is a large part of what makes generalized semantics so difficult.
Linda
-------Original Message-------
From: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@mitre.org>
Sent: 07/17/03 10:44 AM
To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
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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