RE: English Language Tags

[Joaquin Miller <miller@joaquin.net>]

>    <Account> - a ledger of
> financial, numeric, date, or text entries

This is an excellent example to take the discussion deeper than English
versus what we so blithely call 'foreign' languages.

The "human readable" tag, <Account>, has at least two
extremely common meanings in business: 

-- A list of bookkeeping entries

-- A
customer or client 

We also have:

-- An arrangement
to keep money in a bank or do business with a firm (quite distinct from
entries in the bank's or firm's books)

as well as others.

.......

I mention this because it illustrates one good reason to start with some
kind of language-free identifier, and then allow for tag names in natural
languages.  The identifier points us to a statement of the meaning
of the tag.  The tag name in natural language may be added. 

For those who know the meaning of the tag, it will help them recall
it.  For those who do not know the meaning, it may or may not help
and may very well lead to misunderstanding.

======================

By the way, this <Account> also shows the difficulty of
crafting good definitions.  I don't know much about accounting, so
perhaps this is a good definition of one usage of 'account.'  It is
different, though, from the perhaps more common usage whereby a ledger
has many accounts and an account is One of the heads or subdivisions of
the ledger.

ledger  
A.
n. 
1.
A book that lies
permanently in some place. 
d. Commerce The principal book
of the ‘set of books’ ordinarily employed for recording mercantile
transactions. 
Its distinctive feature is that its contents consist of
‘debtor-and-creditor accounts’. Usually each person (or firm) with whom
the trader has business relations has an account in the ledger, headed
with his name, and showing the sums charged to his debit on the left page
or half-page, and on the right those credited to him. In the system of
‘double entry’ the ledger includes other accounts of similar form to
these, but headed with the designations of certain branches or
subdivisions of the trader’s own business.  [OED]

Cordially,

Joaquin

................................................

Joaquin Miller

Chief Architect

Financial Systems Architects

mailto:joaquin@acm.org

San Francisco

phone: +1 (510) 336-2545

fax:   +1 (510) 336-2546

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