Re: English Language Tags

["William J. Kammerer" <wkammerer@foresightcorp.com>]

I had proposed in Re: Tag Languages, UID's etc., at
http://lists.ebxml.org/archives/ebxml-core/200101/msg00163.html, and
indeed all along, that we consider a consistent set of readable XML
*tags* for markup.  The consistency could be provided by the BSR Basic
Semantics Register, or some similar technique.   Though the BSR provides
English language SU labels, many of us - like Murray Maloney, Jon Bosak,
or myself - could live with any set of labels built on some (one)
natural language.

In the unlikely event we deliberately chose not to use English for the
markup, I would simply ask that labels (SU components or whatever) be
written in some Germanic or Romance language using the Latin alphabet
free of diacritics.  Netherlandic would be an ideal compromise. The
vocabulary of necessary words (SUs) in the markup would be fairly
limited.  Generally, only programmers would be expected to read the XML
tag markup. (Of course, I'm kidding about the Netherlandic - it was a
multi-cultural sop. Why bother using anything other than English?)

Andreas Schultz must be confusing XML markup (tags) with the data to be
carried in those tags: "So it seems, that we are (only) talking english
speaking SMEs, because if they don't  - who cares, they are not
important for the global (english) e-business world."  Non-English
languages, and indeed languages not written in the Latin alphabet, can
and will be used for data.  This is the data that the SME, consumer, or
non-programmer will see on his Web form or report.

I am perplexed as to why we still have trouble distinguishing markup
from data.  Markup is for programmers and software, using a limited
vocabulary.  The data - the character stuff contained between the start
and end XML tags - can be in any language supported by UNICODE.

This markup-text dichotomy is a separate issue from using UIDs.  Even
after considering the contributions from UID proponents, I see no
advantage these unintelligent identifiers have over a natural language
vocabulary used to build semantic components (read: BSR).

William J. Kammerer
FORESIGHT Corp.
4950 Blazer Memorial Pkwy.
Dublin, OH USA 43017-3305
+1 614 791-1600

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