RE: [xml-dev] Xml Revisited

["Michael Kay" <mike@saxonica.com>]

> I kept wondering how something so simple could use such 
> convoluted terms.
> An entity to me was something in Entity Relationship 
> modeling.  A file 
> was something you included.  A compiland (Pascal) was something you 
> imported - or a package in Java.
> 

English clearly has a shortage of abstract nouns. Element, Item, Object,
Thing, Entity, Resource, Unit: everyone tries to make their concepts as
general as possible, and therefore ends up using words that (a) mean
nothing, and (b) clash with the abstract nouns chosen by the designers of
other systems.

The use of "Entity" is indeed unfortunate - but remember that until the web
came along, data people and document people never spoke to each other, in
fact, they hardly acknowledged each other's existence.

Regards,

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
http://twitter.com/michaelhkay