From: Devin Kouts (devinkouts_at_earthlink.net)
Date: Mon Jan 29 2001 - 06:07:05 CET
Received: (from mdom_at_localhost) by karto.ethz.ch (8.9.3/8.9.3/SuSE Linux 8.9.3-0.1) id GAA31320 for cavexml-outgoing; Mon, 29 Jan 2001 06:01:23 +0100 Received: from falcon.prod.itd.earthlink.net (falcon.prod.itd.earthlink.net [207.217.120.74]) by karto.ethz.ch (8.9.3/8.9.3/SuSE Linux 8.9.3-0.1) with ESMTP id GAA31316 for <cavexml_at_cartography.ch>; Mon, 29 Jan 2001 06:01:22 +0100 Received: from earthlink.net (sdn-ar-001varestP305.dialsprint.net [168.191.217.43]) by falcon.prod.itd.earthlink.net (EL-8_9_3_3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA08641 for <cavexml_at_cartography.ch>; Sun, 28 Jan 2001 21:01:33 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <3A74FA79.8000705@earthlink.net> Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 00:07:05 -0500 From: Devin Kouts <devinkouts_at_earthlink.net> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; m18) Gecko/20001108 Netscape6/6.0 X-Accept-Language: ko,en To: cavexml_at_cartography.ch Subject: Re: <text> vs. <comment> References: <3A72562B.6D8596E2_at_xmission.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-cavexml_at_karto.baug.ethz.ch Precedence: bulk Reply-To: cavexml_at_cartography.ch
Paul, good points. I could get behind a switch from Comment to something
less likely to be confused with an existing construct.
I also like your point:
>Also note the "text" has fewer letters than "comment", a minor, but not
>irrelevant point.
This is something I had been thinking of a couple months back. I'm
ambivolent about suggesting the use of <ForwardAzimuth> as a tag. I like
it because its clearly understandable and supports the human readable
mantra of XML. On the other hand it's a space hog, especially when you
consider that those (16*2+1) 33 characters will probably only delimit 5
maximum characters (example 359.5) of data.
I have to temper my desire to shorten the tag to something like <FAZ> by
remembering the rapid pace of technology and that every day memory and
disk and bandwidth grow rapidly cheaper. Ten years from now
<ForwardAzimuth> will be ignored as common sense, but <FAZ> will be
likened to the use of two digits to represent years.
I would like to see CaveXML use the most concise, but clearly understood
tag names possible. <Text> is a good one. Any suggestions for a better
<ForwardAzimuth>?
Paul & Eleanor wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
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