Re: terminology wa Re: XML basics Re: LC model draft draft-ietf-forces-model-07.txt

On Tue, 2006-31-10 at 11:13 +0100, tom.petch wrote:

> I think anything using XML then has a problem with the words 'element' and
> 'attribute' since they have a technical, XML meaning and yes, prefixing or
> adding a second word is a good solution to that.

I had someone who wasnt knowledgeable in xml read this draft a while
back while they were also trying to learn xml; i found myself spending a
lot of time describing the semantics of those terms to them. 
So you pov is valuable. Some of us have stared at these drafts for too
long we are in reader fatigue mode and miss the odd obvious things. So
thanks for your input.

I went and checked our code and changing these naming conventions would
in most places just require a recompile. So the impact of the change is
a non-issue. Lets do the RightThing(tm).

> Specifically, the part that confuses me most is the shift in terminolgy between
> s4 - (operational) attributes and capabilities (attributes) - versus s3 -
> capabilities and capacities, respectively, and s7.  I prefer to avoid the word
> attribute in its entirety here but recognise that that means changing the
> schema; for me, capabilities and capacities (or constraints), as used in s3, is
> better.
> 

One could claim that the term "attribute" has been hijacked by xml ;->
It does make a lot of sense in the form of usage made in Forces. 
I need to go back and review those sections again with this insight to
have better input. What does Joel think about this?

> This also ripples back into -protocol where in some places, attributes and
> capabilities are used, in others attributes would seem to cover both
> (operational attributes and capability attributes), while element is widely used
> and seems to mean the atomic piece of data that the ForCES protocol operates on.
> 

If theres consensus on the model, we should be fine fixing the protocol
draft.

> 'element' as used in -model may cause confusion with arrays when arrays consist
> of multiple elements which are not necessarily XML elements.

Same comments as before apply.

cheers,
jamal