Re: [xml-dev] markup humility

[Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie>]

On 22/02/2022 10:03, Norman Gray wrote:
[...]
> I heartily agree with you that 'who asserted it and in what context'
> is vitally important, because a statement could mean different things
> in different contexts, and it's important for the SW to respect that.

Viewed in isolation, what does the following declaration mean?

<!element Title - - (#PCDATA)>

When I was very young, I thought it meant — unambiguously — the title of
the document. Until someone suggested I RTFM, where it was clear that it
was for holding Mr|Ms|Mrs|Miss|Dr|Rev|etc (in the days before building
menu options into the markup became A Thing).

However — pace those who insist all declarations are meaning-free — it
may reasonably be assumed that the content should be a "Title", whatever
that means in whatever cultural context it stood in. In English, it does
/not/ assert that it should be used to hold, for example, the speed
limit in Km/h, or the number of sheep in the flock who had lambs this year.

It's not just the context it's in, it's what contexts it is /not/ in.

> But doesn't the idea of the quad-store do that already?  Each triple 
> is annotated with the URI of the graph that asserted it, which can 
> either be checked later, footnote-style, or be managed 
> algorithmically.

This is very attractive, except that our dreams of stable, permanent
URIs are long gone. Several attempts to create durable authority
pointers have been made, and it remains to be seen whether or not the
most recent will stay the test of time.

Peter