RE: [xml-dev] Do attributes have scope? Are attributes metadata?

["Len Bullard" <Len.Bullard@ses-i.com>]

While I agree that the distinction can be in the eye of the "tagger",
from the perspective of the requirements of the architect, there is a
distinction:  metadata is data about data.   So it is a fair assumption
that the units are about the element value and therefore are data from
the perspective of the language even if not from the required
perspective of the 'metalanguage'.

It's fair to say XML doesn't distinguish these but just as fair to say
this can be expressed using the syntax of XML and documented ascriptions
such as type definitions.

No amount of hyperbolic word wrangling by the TAG was ever able to get
around the concept of the record of authority.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Norman Gray [mailto:norman@astro.gla.ac.uk] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 29, 2012 7:51 AM
To: David Carlisle
Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Do attributes have scope? Are attributes
metadata?


Greetings.

On 2012 Feb 29, at 13:21, David Carlisle wrote:

>> <altitude units="feet">12000</altitude>
>> 
>> (3) Is it correct to say, "The units attribute provides metadata
>> about the altitude element's value" or, more casually, "The attitude
>> is 12000 feet"
> 
> that I would say is a classic instance where it is _not_ metadata.
> the units are as much a part of the value as the numerical part.

But even that's disputable (and I say this as someone who necessarily
docks marks from students who omit units).  Say we found this passage in
the tagged-up memoirs of some airman:

    The altimeter was reading <altitude units='feet'>1200</altitude>
when the Red Baron appeared out of the sun...

There, the fact that the original MS read "1200" is data, and the fact
that this was feet, and indeed that it was an altitude (rather than an
eccentrically wired cockpit clock), is a piece of interpretation by the
tagger, and therefore (!) metadata.

I say this only to wonder whether there is _anything_ that is
indisputably metadata or data.

All the best,

Norman


-- 
Norman Gray  :  http://nxg.me.uk
SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK




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