Re: Relationship Taxonomy Questions

At 2:34 PM 1/23/97, Len Bullard wrote:
>The problem is to figure out if hyperlink means:
>
>o data object
>
>o record
>
>o structure

These all seem the same to me.
>
>By all means put a non-normative set of relationship types
>in the spec.  But these are domain-specific relationships.
>They are application conventions.  Topics, if you will.

On this we agree.

>Once you try to specify a class relationship (supertypes, subtypes)
>and expect inheritance and interoperation, you have to specify
>standard operations.

Why? What are the standard operations on Mammals and elephants required to
support the statement "An elephant is a mammal".

This is simply false. It is true, that as we do _not_ have to define
operations, we will _not_ get much benefit from the magic OO dust that you
are once again asking us to sprinkle on presentational markup.

>However, if you expect these XML processors to interoperate,
>the easiest approach is to use some "pernicious" concepts
>from real world systems.  Your sponsors are already doing that.

Sure. Why don't we use raw TeX for markup too? It does better text layout
than any of these crappy browsers. The prevelance of bad solutions does not
make them less bad. XML is about data representation. XML stylesheets are
about coupling operations semantics to representations.

   XML linking should also be about representation. This is not deep, just
tacking labels on, and co-indexing executable functions to the labels later
on. It's a good idea for links for the same reason that it is a good idea
for texts.

SGML/XML markup is just about ataching labels, and letting the processor
take care of itself. This does not always make life easier in the short
run. I can get better results quickly with a word-processor than an SGML
system.

   It should be no surprise if linking were to show similar phenomena. I
think that a XML version of HTML (with example stylesheets to make it work)
will provide the simple semantics for simple needs.

    In linking as with document structure, XML will have much more under
the hood for the long term.

  -- David

I am not a number. I am an undefined character.
_________________________________________
David Durand              dgd@cs.bu.edu  \  david@dynamicDiagrams.com
Boston University Computer Science        \  Sr. Analyst
http://www.cs.bu.edu/students/grads/dgd/   \  Dynamic Diagrams
--------------------------------------------\  http://dynamicDiagrams.com/
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Received on Thursday, 23 January 1997 22:10:44 UTC