Re: [xml-dev] Semantic entities versus syntactic entities

[Mukul Gandhi <gandhi.mukul@gmail.com>]

Hi Roger,

On Sat, May 29, 2010 at 6:49 PM, Costello, Roger L. <costello@mitre.org> wrote:
>    1. Say your name out loud.
>
>    2. Say "your name" out loud.
>
> In the first sentence we expect to hear that person's name. In the second sentence we expect to hear the words, "your name."
>
> In the first sentence the words "your name" are semantic entities. In the second sentence the words "your name" are syntactic entities.
>
> By quoting the words we have turned off the normal semantic interpretation of the words.

Personally, I would agree to your interpretation above, from point of
view of an 'English linguistic description' (I'm not really quite
sure, whether this quoted phrase conveys to English audience, what I
want to convey. I hope this phrase, makes sense :)).

>    1. <altitude>
>
>    2. &lt;altitude>
>
> In the first case we expect an XML parser to process it as an element. In the second case we expect an XML parser to process it as literal text.

I agree.

> In the first case <altitude> is a semantic entity to an XML parser. In the second case
> &lt;altitude> is a syntactic entity to an XML parser.

I would agree with, Piotr that we should not equalize English
linguistics domain, with XML parsing theory. An XML parser I think,
makes sure that, a stream of unicode characters which the user thinks
is XML, is *really* XML.



-- 
Regards,
Mukul Gandhi