RE: XML Primer (was Keys. (derives from Re: Sequences of combining characters.))

From: Shawn Steele (shawnste@winse.microsoft.com)
Date: Thu Sep 26 2002 - 16:03:35 EDT

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    Mr. Overington,

    Peter didn't specifically mention that his suggestion is an example of XML, although he alluded to that fact. As many people have mentioned before on this list, XML is a more appropriate mechanism for many of your inventions, and it is also a standard.

    One of the neatest things about XML is that you can invent your own tags, as Peter's example did below. Of course applications still must agree on the meanings of those tags, but your suggestion has the same limitation.

    A big advantage of XML is that even when the tags are not understood, they can still be safely ignored without fear that other information is lost, garbled or otherwise mangled.

    Some other examples of how your XML tags may have been chosen are:

            <CometCircumflex SentenceCode="12001">London</CometCircumflex>

    or

            <CometCircumflex SentenceCode="12001" Parameter1="London"/>

    or

            <CometCircumflex SentenceCode="12001" Parameter1="London">Thanks for visiting our stand in London.</CometCircumflex>

    or

            <CometCircumflex SentenceCode="12001">Thanks for visiting our <Parameter Number="1">London</Parameter> stand.</CometCircumflex>

    Notice that in the last 2 examples an English string appears, so a reader without your translation system will still have understandable text if your XML tags are ignored (as most programs do when they don't understand XML.)

    Also, even though English is provided in the last 2 strings, the other necessary information (Sentence=12001 and Parameter #1=London) is included for your translation algorithm. The author chose to use slightly different text than your standard "It was a pleasure to welcome you to our stand at the recent exhibition in P1." That allows the author to make minor deviations to customize his text for native speakers, yet the author could still communicate with non-native speakers.

    I should also mention that your proposed system still has some limitations. For example if the conference were in Cologne, Germany, a Deutsch speaker would expect the city name Köln instead.

    I hope that this example improves your understanding of XML and how it may be applied to your inventions. As others have mentioned, this topic is digressing from the purpose of this message board and would be best discussed off line or in a different forum.

    - Shawn

    Shawn Steele
    Software Developer Engineer
    Microsoft

    My comments in no way endorse the original and are not intended to confer legitimacy, rather they are merely intended to be educational.

    This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

    -----Original Message-----
    >A document would contain a sequence such as follows.
    >
    >U+2604 U+0302 U+20E3 12001 U+2460 London U+2604 U+0302 U+20E2

    You could just as easily have used

    <S C="12001">London</S>

    or

    <S C="12001" P1="London"/>

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