Re: Long Tags Codes etc. again

[Philip Goatly <philip.goatly@bolero.net>]

Hi there,

 

   You are right of course the context is all important. Take 'Stock' for instance - in the context of a kitchen it probably has something to do with soup. But in a Gunsmiths soemthing to do with a gun. Or in a Stock exchange etc.

 

   However if you use 'Name' as you suggest the computer is so stupid that the definition of Name must apply to every instance of it within the XML document whether the Name applies to the context of a person or a product etc. There is probably no problem with Name, but in other cases there might be some confusion eg. Stock above.

 

The problem is that the word Stock is overlaoded.

 

 

Cheers, Phil

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: martin.me.roberts@bt.com

To: mblantz@netfish.com ; philip.goatly@bolero.net ; ebxml-core@lists.ebxml.org

Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2001 12:40 PM

Subject: RE: Long Tags Codes etc. again

Hi,

    One way to get round this is to use the context of the previous tags to add meaning and hense you don't end up with:

 

    <SellerPartyName>

 

    You get;

 

    <SellerParty>

        <Name>

 

    The amount of characters is the nearly the same but the tags are short.

 

    Getting XML messages on one screen is almost impossible as you end up saying xml messages must be only 24-60 lines long as traditionall XML is shown with one element per line.

Martin M.E. Roberts
xml designer, BTexaCT
01473 643775
martin.me.roberts@bt.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Blantz, Mary Kay [mailto:mblantz@netfish.com]
Sent: 17 April 2001 12:39
To: 'Philip Goatly'; ebXML Core
Subject: RE: Long Tags Codes etc. again

Hi,

 

Speaking just as me, and not wearing any hats at all...

 

If we do this right, then many small enterprises will be exchanging info electronically for

the first time.  Just as new users did with traditional EDI, I suspect the majority will start

with just displaying the data on their computers.  In this case, it would be good if all

the information was on one screen.

 

So, I vote for short but meaningful tags. 

 

Mary Kay

-----Original Message-----
From: Philip Goatly [mailto:philip.goatly@bolero.net]
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2001 4:47 AM
To: ebXML Core
Subject: Long Tags Codes etc. again

 Folks
   It has been said

 1.  Human readability by domain experts as well as software specialist,
 is a requirement for XML documents.

  Yes true, but if we were to adopt a 'code' as a tag then it would still be
 human readable i.e it is ASCII but the meaning would be obscured to the
 casual/uneducated reader. It is not beyond the wit of comptuing to look up
 the 'code' and make it friendly to the casual reader. Also, given the
 human reader could have some language other than English as his/her mother
 tongue, then the look up could be keyed on Language Code + tag code. Is this
 even better than having a long English tag?

 Even with 'long' tag names, which allow readability in English, there
 still remains a problem, in that the tag does not convey the complete
meaning - otherwise we would not need any semantics at all.

 Again we must ask a similar question to the one which I posed before.

 How much of the semantics should be in the tag and how much in the
 actual semantic description of the element.

 There is a temptation to write an 'essay' in the tag.

 Anybody got thoughts on this one ?

 Cheers, Phil