On Mon, 2011-09-26 at 08:54 -0400, Costello, Roger L. wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> How do you define a parent element and its children?
> Recap: here are two ways of defining the meaning of markup:
>
> 1. Object-property
> 2. Functional definition
>
> What other ways are there?
What is this thing called "meaning" of which you speak?
One fundamental difference between GML and XSLT is that GML is a
modeling language. Other XML vocabulary types include transcription
languages (TEI), document-writing languages (docbook, mallard),
event-logs (HTTP access, bird-watching reports), constraint languages,
graphical languages, formatting languages, XML-based protocols (xmlrpc,
SOAP, WDT [1]) and much more.
Some languages use the parent-child relationship to signify something
beyond parent-child or "has-a" and some do not. My feeling is that most
do not, in fact.
Similarly, followed-by can be significant, and often is, but also often
is not. War and Peace is a lot to read in any order, but makes most
sense in original document order. Dhalgren makes no sense in any
order :-)
XSLT uses lexical containment (parent-child) as a scoped block; a
graphical language might use containment as an implicit clipping or
grouping.
There's no general rule.
Liam
[1] "SOAP - Where's The Dirt?"
--
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
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