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Re: [dita] proposal on "vocabulary" terminology

From
W. Eliot Kimber <>
Date
2004-10-01T13:33:03+00:00
ID
Thread
Re: [dita] proposal on "vocabulary" terminology
JoAnn Hackos wrote:
> Is there a reason that we cannot use "document type" except for an
> intrusion into the DTD world? I think information developers and
> architects are more likely to understand the term "doc type" rather
> than a more esoteric term like "vocabulary"? I'd like to err on the
> side of usability and user-centeredness if possible. JoAnn

"document type" is certainly the most accurate if you take it to mean 
"abstract document type" (that is, a set of types distinct from any 
implementation expression of them) but I think that most people don't 
make that distinction, especially people like many of us with deep SGML 
brain damage, where there was no obvious need to distinquish between the 
abstract document type and its syntactic expression.

That's one reason I prefer "vocabulary"--it's completely (and in the 
namespace spec, explicitly) divorced from any particular syntactic or 
formal definition or expression of the vocabulary.

Cheers,

E.
-- 
W. Eliot Kimber
Professional Services
Innodata Isogen
9390 Research Blvd, #410
Austin, TX 78759
(512) 372-8122


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