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A kilometer is a unit of length, and length is a dimension of the Yangtze
River.
Since most programming languages don't make these distinctions it's tough to
give you a programming language analogy. But in XML, one usage I have seen
recommended is to make dimension an element name and units a qualifying
attribute, e.g.,
<river name="Yangtze">
<length units="kilometer">6300</length>
</river>
For each two readers of this list, there will probably be three different
opinions. ;-}
Bob Foster
----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@mitre.org>
To: <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
Cc: "Costello,Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2003 5:56 AM
Subject: [xml-dev] What are units-of-measure? e.g., what's a "kilometer"?
> Hi Folks,
>
> Consider this statement:
>
> "The length of the Yangtze River is 6300 kilometers."
>
> What is a "kilometer"?
>
> 1. Is kilometer a class? Is 6300 an instance of the kilometer class?
> kilometer class: {..., 6300, ...}
>
> 2. Is kilometer a function? e.g., kilometer(Yangtze) --> 6300
> In general: kilometer(physical object) --> number
> "The kilometer function maps a physical object to a number."
>
> 3. Is kilometer a property? e.g., a property of the Yangtze River
> is kilometer (this doesn't quite sound right; perhaps there's
> another way of expressing this that is more natural?)
>
> 4. Is kilometer a label? If so, then what's a label?
>
> Or is it something else? /Roger
>
>
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