Re: FW: More I18N Last call comments on Schema Part 0

At 11:02 00/06/01 +0000, Misha Wolf wrote:

>[MW5] Section 4.3 --
>      "goods are shipped to England" ... "UK-Address"
>      Not surprisingly, some people don't like the equation:
>         England = UK
>      Please change to:
>      "goods are shipped to the UK"

Speaking only for myself, I observe that as far as I can tell, the
text does not make the objectionable equation.  Since England is
part of the UK, and since the postal standards apply uniformly within
the UK, shipping goods to England requires a UK address.  

If one were to write of shipping goods to Illinois, and then
use a type named 'US-Address', would one be equating Illinois and
the U.S.?

I recognize that sensibilities are touchy with respect to terms of
nationality in virtually all parts of the British Isles.  But I
think the objection to be met is more accurately described as one 
against using the term 'England' in proximity to the term 'U.K.', 
since such proximity distracts some readers from the point at hand 
and leads them into meditations on the power relations in the 
British Isles which are not germane to the task of introducing
the fundamental constructs of XML Schema 1.0.

Rather than substitute the colorless "goods shipped to the U.K.", 
however, I would rather suggest that the editor change it to "goods 
shipped to Wales" or "goods shipped to Scotland", or perhaps a city 
name ("goods shipped to Manchester"?).  I won't suggest shipping 
to Northern Ireland, for fear of triggering a different but equally
distracting train of non-germane reflections.

-C. M. Sperberg-McQueen

Received on Thursday, 13 July 2000 17:01:30 UTC