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Perhaps it could be said that for *human* readers (editors, authors, folks
trying to visually interpret the data), the markup does indeed provide
semantic clues to the content, but that for computer processors, it is just
text strings with semantics supplied by the application.
It does seem to be delving into philosophy, though. :-)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Koberg [mailto:rob@koberg.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 9:23 AM
> To: Michael Kay
> Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: Re: [xml-dev] RE: description of the logical or
> semantic structure
>
> Michael Kay wrote:
> >><Person>
> >> <Name>Peter Smith</Name>
> >> <Age>56</Age>
> >></Person>
> >>
> >>
> >>Does the markup describes the content for example "Peter
> Smith" in a
> >>semantic way, that means does it describes that the content "Peter
> >>Smith" has the semantic of a name
> >
> >
> > No, the tags in your markup are arbitrary strings. It's your
> > description of the markup "When I say Name, I mean personal
> name" that
> > conveys the semantics. There's arguably a default
> description "When I
> > use a tag that's an English word, I use it with the same meaning as
> > that English word", but that's still something that's
> external to the
> > XML document itself. The tags have no meaning without an
> external explanation of their intent and usage.
> > Without that explanation, the above XML fragment could mean
> "Launch an
> > attack on Cuba NOW!".
>
> ufff...
>
> would you say the same about phonetic sounds or
> alpha-numerics? If not, what's the difference? It did not
> start out codified, right? But something came of it...
>
> what am I missing?
>
> -Rob
>
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