From: Paul & Eleanor (goodhill_at_xmission.com)
Date: Sat Jan 27 2001 - 06:01:31 CET
Received: (from mdom_at_localhost) by karto.ethz.ch (8.9.3/8.9.3/SuSE Linux 8.9.3-0.1) id FAA24483 for cavexml-outgoing; Sat, 27 Jan 2001 05:58:12 +0100 Received: from mail.xmission.com (mail.xmission.com [198.60.22.22]) by karto.ethz.ch (8.9.3/8.9.3/SuSE Linux 8.9.3-0.1) with ESMTP id FAA24479 for <cavexml_at_cartography.ch>; Sat, 27 Jan 2001 05:58:11 +0100 Received: from slc523.modem.xmission.com ([166.70.7.15] helo=xmission.com) by mail.xmission.com with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1) id 14MNRK-0002md-00 for cavexml_at_cartography.ch; Fri, 26 Jan 2001 21:58:18 -0700 Message-ID: <3A72562B.6D8596E2@xmission.com> Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 22:01:31 -0700 From: Paul & Eleanor <goodhill_at_xmission.com> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en To: "cavexml_at_cartography.ch" <cavexml_at_cartography.ch> Subject: <text> vs. <comment> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-cavexml_at_karto.baug.ethz.ch Precedence: bulk Reply-To: cavexml_at_cartography.ch
Great discussion of comment text. I particularly liked the idea that
text could be labeled with author, date and language, so I withdrawl
my talking point about having untagged text (PCDATA).
A few comments regarding "comments"
1. To call them a comment is to confuse them in my (computer programmers
mind) with the XML comments which have the form:
<!-- The following text was reformatted to fit on the page ---!>
with text that goes with the survey data.
<comment made_by="Jim" text="had a bubble in it"
<date day="1" month="2" year="2001" />
</comment>
Can you see the difference? I do.
Two more suggestions for the form shown
2. the text should be open ended and free form.
So I would suggest that what was suggested as <comment/> would become
<text> or <narrative> or something.
This would allow narratives to be placed in the XML. Not that I expect
Gary or anyone else to process such things in any way, just so that I'm
not limited to something inside a quoted string. Quoted strings usually
suggest a single line.
It would also allow me to comment out, some weird CaveXML+ extension
that
included something that others would find un-readable.
<text>
<roomModel >
<poly id=1>1.234,3.456,34.5678</poly>
....
<roomModel>
</text>
I hope whatever you are thinking I was writing there seems odd enough
to not be a candidate for CaveXML at this time.
So getting back to the examples from Martin's reply.
<text author="Jim">
<date ... />
Had a bubble in it.
</text>
3. I believe there is already a date standard and what you show is NOT
it. I
would suggest sticking with that. The one that comes to mind is ISO 8601
(see http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html) which has the
form 2001-01-26 (sortable, not any use of slashes to be be confused with
common national styles, etc. etc.)
Just to play with text blocks a bit, I might suggest an optional
title/name attribute for the main text block. So in summary,
<text xml:lang="es" author="Jose" date="2001-01-27">
que significa?
</text>
with all attributes optional, so the following would work just as well.
<text title="Article: How we found Joe's Annex" author="Joe Bob" >
The follow was taken from an article in the Armchair Cave, January
2001
Yada yada yada ....
</text>
Also note the "text" has fewer letters than "comment", a minor, but not
irrelevant point.
Your comments on imbedded textual stuff is appreciated.
-Paul
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed Feb 14 2001 - 00:03:53 CET