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

Actually, I think that the model document probably uses both 
"attribute" and "element" to refer to the same thing.  And sometimes 
that thing is a capability.
So, I would like a term other than capability for the components of 
the LFB classes (and structures).
If that name is X, I think we should refer to what are currently 
called capabilities as capability-X. (whther the hyphen is actually 
required will depend upon what X is.)

Yours,
Joel M. Halpern

At 12:00 PM 11/3/2006, Deleganes, Ellen M wrote:
>Subject: RE: terminology wa Re: XML basics Re: LC model draft 
>draft-ietf-forces-model-07.txt
>To: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email protected]>,
>         <[email protected]>
>
>It looks like there is general agreement that the terminology ought to
>be fixed because the current terminology is causing confusion (though it
>would be good for more people to weigh in).
>
>I like the idea of replacing "attribute" with "capability". We more or
>less equate these in the model document anyway. Section 3 states "FE
>attributes provide information at the FE level, particularly the
>capabilities of the FE at a coarse level". In this case, capabilities
>describe the functions the FE can perform and capacity constraints.
>
>Renaming "element" is going to be more awkward because it doesn't look
>like a simple case of replacing text. This is more an argument for
>fixing this because it indicates the term is overloaded and confusing.
>In one case element is used to describe a protocol element, in other
>cases it is describing a data structure that is part of some other
>structure (such as the array) or is an atomic data type contained within
>a structure. I'm not sure how to disambiguate this, but I can see how
>this can cause some level of confusion - not to mention the term element
>has some connotation in XML. Unfortunately, I don't have a good
>suggestion on how to fix this, prepending a prefix seems like the
>easiest.
>
>Regards,
>Ellen