=?UTF-8?Q?Re=3A_=5Bxml=2Ddev=5D_The_semantics_of_an_XML_document_is

Yeah! The semantics of semantics. Like the ontology of ontology. Is that meta-semantics, or does meta have a different meaning to the one it is usually given. That is meta-meta-semantics.

On Sat, 8 Jan 2022 at 18:27, Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com> wrote:

I moved in the database world at a time when a lot of people were discussing the question "what is a conceptual schema?", and I decided then that if people couldn't agree what the term meant, I wasn't going to use it. I avoid the term "semantics" for exactly the same reason. (Perhaps it even means the same thing. Assuming that meaning is meaningful.)

Michael Kay
Saxonica

On 8 Jan 2022, at 18:01, Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com> wrote:

Eighteen years ago, I wrote “On Semantics and Markup”: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/04/09/SemanticMarkup

I think I still mostly believe everything in that essay. It addresses three questions:
When is markup semantic?
Is semantic-ness a binary condition?
Where do semantics come from?
and ends with this summary:
Descriptive markup is better than the alternatives.