Re: [xml-dev] attribute order

[Mukul Gandhi <mukul_gandhi@yahoo.com>]

I wrote earlier that, I would like to imagine elements
as objects(as in OO programs) and attributes as
object's properties.. Is it right to think like this?
So attribute ordering will not be the right concept.. 

The dictionary defines attribute as quality,
characteristic, feature etc. An object's features
(i.e. attributes) are just features! Giving an order
to them does'nt seem right..

This also helps in deciding, what should be element
and what should be attribute. Of course, at many
places, elements can be made as attributes and
attributes as elements (the parser allows to process
the information depicted in either way!).. But what is
making best sense, should be choosen (i.e. either
elements or attributes)..

Regards,
Mukul

--- Uche Ogbuji <Uche.Ogbuji@fourthought.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-05-07 at 22:26 -0400, G. Ken Holman
> wrote:
> > At 2005-05-07 09:31 +1000, Rick Marshall wrote:
> > >i've read a lot on this list about attribute
> order and the related problem 
> > >of "how do i decide to make something an
> attribute or an element?"
> > >
> > >surely one simple answer to both these questions
> is "if order matters then 
> > >it is an element. if order doesn't matter then
> consider other things - 
> > >white space significance, character encoding,
> etc."
> > >
> > >in fact a short(?) list of the differences
> between entities and attributes 
> > >would make these decisions a lot easier.
> > >
> > >perhaps we could build such a list (or advertise
> a link to one).
> > 
> > http://xml.coverpages.org/elementsAndAttrs.html
> > 
> > I hope this helps.
> 
> Which is just one of the resources I drew upon (and
> linked) in my
> article on the matter:
> 
> Principles of XML design: When to use elementsversus
> attributes
>
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-eleatt.html
> 
> Which, over all, I think is broader and covers more
> of the "list of
> differences" Rick mentions.
> 
> BTW, "if you need order use elements and if not, use
> attributes" is far
> too simplistic.  What about making the choice when
> there's only one data
> element to model?  What about consideration of
> internal structure in the
> data item that might trump the order issue (we don't
> get all our data
> tediously normalized).  Again, I dig more deeply in
> the article.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Uche Ogbuji                              
> Fourthought, Inc.
> http://uche.ogbuji.net                   
> http://fourthought.com
> http://copia.ogbuji.net                  
> http://4Suite.org
> Use CSS to display XML, part 2 -
>
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/x-dw-x-xmlcss2-i.html
> XML Output with 4Suite & Amara -
> http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/04/20/py-xml.html
> Use XSLT to prepare XML for import into OpenOffice
> Calc -
>
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-oocalc/
> Schema standardization for top-down semantic
> transparency -
>
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think31.html
> 
> 
>
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