Kal cannot post to this list.
He has interesting contributions. Isn't tm-pubsubj-comment
public?
-----Original Message-----
From: Kal Ahmed
[mailto:]
Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2002 3:10
PM
To: Bandholtz, Thomas
Subject: RE: [tm-pubsubj-comment]
Good PSIs never die
Thomas,
My last email was
bounced by the list as well... :-(
At 13:54 21/03/2002 +0100, you
wrote:
[Kal:]
No one has yet
said that the documentation would be XML ! But even so which is more human
readable:
<record>
<isbn>123456-09-23</isbn>
<auth-code>AHM1298</auth-code>
<pubdate>20011110</pubdate>
<stock-code>98993939385402</stock-code>
</record>
<book>
<book-title>XML
Meta Data</book-title>
<authors>
<author>Kal
Ahmed</author>
<author>Danny
Ayers</author>
...
</authors>
<published>2001-11-10</published>
<description>
-- blurb about the book goes here
</description>
</book>
I would suggest that XML of the
first form is "machine-readable" and XML of the second form is
"human-readable". But depending upon the system(s) involved, the first form
might be the only form that can be automatically generated for the subject
indicator.
[Thomas:]
We have been talking about XTM, RDF, XHTML, customized
XML so far - all this is XML. But you may be right - needs not to be XML. But
I think it should not be binary encoded.
If this became a limitation for a PSI, it would
restrict PSIs to being a much smaller subset of all subject indicators. The ISO
and XTM specifications do not specify a format for a subject indicator. I guess
it would be a shame if that flexibility had to be sacrificed for PSIs.
Readability only depends on the specific intelligence implemented
in the machine/human.
If I (human,
hopefully) understand the encoding of <auth-code> etc., I can read
it.
If a machine doesn't, it cannot read
it neither.
This is true within the definition
of "readable". But should a PSI resource be "readable" or "understandable". If
it is the latter, should that "understandability" be dependent on other
knowledge external to the resource itself ? In limited circumstances (e.g.
intranet or extranet environments) it could be argued that all users of the PSI
would know what auth-code indictaed (esp. if using a documented schema). But in
generalised internet solutions, surely a subject indicator that relies on
knowledge of yet another schema would be flawed
?
Cheers,
Kal
