Re: [xml-dev] Six Reasons Not to use XML Attributes

[John Cowan <cowan@mercury.ccil.org>]

Uche Ogbuji scripsit:

> I think that if you have a straight-up name field, you either end up
> being culturally obtuse or also needing a bunch of parallel fields for
> various collation scenarios.

That's what I meant by the field needing to be repeatable.  Chris
Maden devised the system that $EMPLOYER is using, which involves
personNameProfile elements which are themselves repeatable, and which have
children for purpose, pattern (what order to put the textual elements in),
the (meta-)name of this profile, full name, and five elements for name
parts: givenName (repeatable), familyName (repeatable), prefix, suffix,
nickname, and full name, all of which are optional.  There is continual
pressure to add middleName, but so far we have effectively resisted it:
canonical U.S. middle names are additional given names.

> I think we can both agree than treating names is harder than most
> developers think, and the point of my advice was to get that pont
> across.

Yes.

> As to the details of structured names, I definitely hear your
> rant. Sometimes I think e.g. TEI's treatment is absolute genius, and
> sometimes I think it's ludicrous over-engineering, and often I carry
> both thoughts at the very same time.

Pointer to that?  I'm always interested in designs on this point.

-- 
John Cowan  cowan@ccil.org   http://ccil.org/~cowan
It's the old, old story.  Droid meets droid.  Droid becomes chameleon.
Droid loses chameleon, chameleon becomes blob, droid gets blob back
again.  It's a classic tale.  --Kryten, Red Dwarf