Re: [xml-dev] Should one adopt the tag naming convention of anexisting X

["=?utf-8?b?Vy4gSHVnaCBDaGF0ZmllbGQ=?=" <csi2000@urbanmarket.com>]

What I know from my past projects is that the naming conventions depend
a lot on what you are trying to model with the DTD, and the end users
of your model.  (assuming DTD here - but could be schemas, etc.
 these project were from way back).

For example, the CALS DTD.  THe US CALS DTD was basically a model of
the "documents" being produced.  In other words, they used text
concepts like volume, chapter, section, para, table, etc.

When I worked on the CALS DTD for Canada it was decided the DTD would
be a model of "equipment" not "documents" - hence there were tags
 introduced for concepts like assembly (recursive) and for each
assembly there were parts list, trouble shooting tables, equipment
description, repair instructions, etc.  Sure ultimately, when the
content wound up as "text", it made sense to use textual tags -
section, para, etc. - and there we could have adopted common tag names
- but even these would have specific equipment tags in the mixed
content sections.  Tables weren't columns and rows, they were
symptoms, test procedure, repair procedure, etc. - but were still
rendered as a table.

When working with the Department of Justice - it was decide to use tag
names that the authors of legislative text (lawyers and legal
specialists) already understood and were in use from authoring all the
way through parliament.  This was before any generic legislative DTDs
hit the market.  We tried to minimize the disruption in the authoring
process on the switch from a highly customized older version of
Word-Perfect to SGML.

So I have always found context and end users to be the driving force,
when a "standard" DTD was not available.  Maybe if you are trying to
decide a tag name from 3 different vocabularies, you would pick the one
with the greatest degree of fit to your end user... whatever degree of
fit might mean in your environment.

Cheers....Hugh

UBL is in your future....  http://goUBL.com

On Fri, 3 Feb 2012 19:14:24 +0000, "Costello, Roger L."
<costello@mitre.org> wrote:
Hi Folks,
>
> I am about to create an XML vocabulary.
>
> My XML vocabulary will leverage (reuse) three existing, mature XML
> vocabularies.
>
> So my XML instances will consist of tags that I created and tags from
> the existing, mature XML vocabularies.
>
> For the tags that I create, what tag naming convention should I use?
> Here are two possibilities:
>
> 1. I will create a my own tag naming convention, independent of the
> XML vocabularies that I will use.
>
> 2. I will adopt the tag naming convention of one of the XML
> vocabularies that I will use. (Which one?)
>
> What do you recommend? What are the tradeoffs?
>
> /Roger
>