>At 09:47 PM 5/18/01 -0400, Jonathan Borden wrote: >>perhaps the greatest benefit of XML is that its surface syntax directly >>represents its abstract syntax, and for someone familiar with XML, this >>means that one can look at a document, even in the absense of a schema, and >>get a pretty good idea of its structure. > >Hmmm... I was speaking with an old friend over the weekend, and >touched upon this general topic. He made an observation (which I >may relay imperfectly) to the effect that one difficulty encountered >by much early AI research could to traced to the idea that giving >something a meaningful name could not be equated with giving it a >meaning. This struck me as similar to some of the things Pat has >said about semantics of RDF (or any language). Yes. In AI this idea has a name; it is called the "Gensym fallacy". >Turning to XML: I don't think the structure of a typical XML >document would be anything like as clear if the tag/attribute names >were replaced by random strings. OK, OK, I give in. I promise not to traash XML *as a text markup language* ever again. I've even come to see the utility of the </redundantRepetitionOfLabelOnOpeningBracket> idea when one is marking up text, since there is no way to guarantee that the text itself does not accidentally contain a 'bare' closing parenthesis. So I guess my scorn has to be reserved for the use of a text markup language as a formal notation. But I will try to keep this toned down to the occassional unkind joke. Pat Hayes --------------------------------------------------------------------- IHMC (850)434 8903 home 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office Pensacola, FL 32501 (850)202 4440 fax phayes@ai.uwf.edu http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~phayesReceived on Thursday, 24 May 2001 15:43:57 GMT
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