[topicmapmail] Fragmented XTM for web metadata, and some ontology?

[Peter P. Jones]

I didn't say the use of ANY was good.
Note the comment 'Ick'.

I'm well aware of the implications of ANY.

(Please don't kick innocent bystanders.)

On 30 Jun 2003 at 1:19, Murray Altheim wrote:

> Peter P. Jones wrote:
> > On 29 Jun 2003 at 17:31, Murray Altheim wrote:
> >
> >>>The content model in the DTD would have to become
> >>><!ELEMENT resourceData ANY >
> >>>
> >>>Ick.
> >>
> >>No, that's a common misunderstanding. "ANY" means any declared
> >>element, not any markup. That would mean that any declared XTM
> >>element could appear anywhere within an occurrence, which would be
> >>only partly as bad as allowing any markup whatsoever. Absent a
> >>schema, interpretation is pretty much a guess.
> >
> > Right, but there's nothing to stop me adding a DOCTYPE to the 
> > instance to declare entities. Then any would mean ANY.
> 
> As in my messages with Kal, there's nothing at all stopping you from
> doing anything you like anytime you like. But as soon as you begin
> declaring element types within declaration subsets, the wierdness of
> that (speaking from someone with a great deal of experience with
> markup) should be telling you you're doing something that nobody else
> is going to understand, like making up new words and expecting people
> to understand you. So nobody is stopping you, but nobody will
> understand you either.
> 
> I'm not sure what the point of all this is. There is communication.
> And there are ways of making communication much more difficult. You
> can certainly choose to make your communication more difficult, but
> why? Freedom is a great thing -- you have the freedom to babble
> incoherently, but it's not much good for anything other than making
> noise. Standards exist to assist people in communicating.
> 
> Murray
> 
> ......................................................................
> ..... Murray Altheim                        
> http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/ Knowledge Media Institute The
> Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK                   
> .
> 
>         "There's a lot of intelligence out there that you don't
>          know if it's true or not."  -- Anonymous US official
>          http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3014850.stm
> 
>