- From: <lee@sq.com>
- Date: Tue, 20 May 97 14:03:29 EDT
- To: w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org
> I would much rather have 8 versions of:
> > <author>
> > <firstname>foo</firstname>
> > <lastname>bar</lastname>
> > </author>
>
> than have each server alpha-rename the tags to different
> incomprehensible tags,
Another approach is to have a header,
<header>
<field element="a" name="firstname">First Name</field>
<field element="b" name="lastname">Last Name</field>
<field element="c" name="author">Warpper for Author record</field>
<field element="d" name="id">Unique ID for database key</field>
</header>
<body>
<c><a>Parcival</a><b>Snitterpoop</b><d>1</d></c>
<c><a>Priscilla</a><b>Winterbottom</b><d>2</d></c>
and so forth.
This maps conveniently into typesetting tables, and also into the
common variant of CSV files in which the first line lists the field names:
firstname,lastname,author,id
Parcival,Snitterpoop,1
Priscilla,Winterbottom,2
in which you can't actually distinguish the first line from the others
except by human understanding and inspection (ugh!).
I have added textual descriptions in the header; these could be omitted if
unavailable, with the possibility of making the "field" element EMPTY.
Lee
Received on Tuesday, 20 May 1997 14:03:43 UTC