Re: Elements with explicit behavior versus elements that contain data used to produce behavior

Norm Tovey-Walsh <[email protected]> Wed, 08 Feb 2023 11:04:22 +0000

Newsgroups	gmane.text.xml.devel
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

> Consider this XML element:
>
> <xsl:value-of select="/BookStore/Book[1]/Title"/>
>
> That is an element (value-of) and the element has an attribute
> (select). That element means something. It has a specific behavior.

Maybe.

> Next, consider this XML element:
>
> <airport>
>     <name>Logan Airport</name>
>     <instrument-departure>
>         ...
>     </instrument-departure>
> </airport>
>
> That element (airport) does not have a behavior.

Maybe.

> In the first case the element has explicitly defined behavior whereas
> in the second case the element has data that is ingested by an
> application to produce a behavior.

I don’t think the first element has defined behavior unless it is
ingested by an XSLT processor (or unless you’ve read some documentation
about what elements in the xsl: namespace “mean”).

Equally, I could write some software that took the “airport” element and
performed operations as a result. And without knowing what namespace
airport is in, or what documentation you might have at hand which
describes the semantics of elements in that namespace, it’s impossible
to say.

> I would like to hear your thoughts on this. Is the distinction useful?

Maybe. I don’t think it’s useful in a precise, technical sense, but it’s
often a shortcut in describing vocabularies informally.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

--
Norman Tovey-Walsh <[email protected]>
https://nwalsh.com/

> Simplicity is always a virtue.--Edward Abbey

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