RE: Units of Measure

[Rachel Foerster <rachelf@ix.netcom.com>]

William,

Thanks for the clarification. Norman Walsh's statement which you've quoted
would seem to me to argue against abstract tags that would point to either
an X12 or UN/EDIFACT data element. Additionally, it would also seem to argue
against your belief that a code value from one of these two standards be
conveyed rather than some human-readable definition. But then, as you've
pointed out, look at all of the problems with the variations on how a code
definition could be stated.

This doesn't seem to point to a clear and easy path for on-the-fly
interoperability of XML-based documents, does it?

Rachel

>
> Rachel Foerster asked "Actually, if I understand the XML
> Recommendation
> correctly, it's only the tag that must be human readable, correct?"
>
> Dear Rachel:
>
> One of the requirements in section 1.1 Origin and Goals in the XML 1.0
> Specification, at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml, does say "XML
> documents
> should be human-legible and reasonably clear."  Norman Walsh adds "If
> you don't have an XML browser and you've received a hunk of XML from
> somewhere, you ought to be able to look at it in your favorite text
> editor and actually figure out what the content means."  See XML
> Development Goals at http://www.xml.com/pub/98/10/guide1.html.
>
> I would add that it's reasonable to expect the reader to be
> an expert in
> the problem domain if they're really going to read the XML document;
> probably only somebody intimately familiar with EDI implementation
> guidelines, and EDIFACT and X12 terminology, would understand the tags
> and structure in igML, say; see http://www.igml.org/.
>
> Some have advocated nonsense tags (like BZRTVN) whose meaning
> would have
> to be extracted from some repository, in order to avoid
> offending those
> whose mother tongue is not English.   Unfortunately, those tags would
> clearly violate the human-legibility requirement since most
> people can't
> pronounce anything without vowels.  By the way, I'm still waiting for
> some clown to advocate neutral star dates because ebXML's ISO
> 8601 date
> and time requirement uses the Christian calendar.
>
> I couldn't figure out what John Motley meant by "An X12 message would
> simply be another RENDERING with a different DTD."  What's
> X12 got to do
> with a hunk of XML data? And wouldn't you ever need just one DTD? Why
> would a DTD have to be rendered at all?  It's data that might be
> rendered with various style sheets (or programs) to display the same
> data with French, Spanish, English, or German labels and legends.  Is
> John talking about rendering a DTD's element names in a different
> language?  If so, I can't see the point of that since only programmers
> would in all likelihood ever look at XML directly, and they deal with
> English labels and commands all day long now in HTML, C++, and Java.
>
> William J. Kammerer
> FORESIGHT Corp.
> 4950 Blazer Memorial Pkwy.
> Dublin, OH USA 43017-3305
> +1 614 791-1600
>
> Visit FORESIGHT Corp. at http://www.foresightcorp.com/
> "Commerce for a New World"
>
>