[eml-dev] EML 2.0.2 changes to text leaf nodes

[Christopher Jones]

Mark,

You've certainly not caused any distractions - in fact, your opinions  
are much appreciated.  As I read what you wrote, I realized that I was  
loosely using the the term 'meaning'.  To clarify, formatting markup  
using TextType elements can really only preserve human-readable  
inferred meaning (like italicized species binomials), but as you point  
out, are no replacement for formal semantic tagging that can be parsed  
via a machine.  I think there are benefits to both, the latter being a  
much loftier goal (if done well).

I agree with Matt, Wade, Margaret, you and others that there are  
xs:string-typed leaf nodes that *must* be preserved as such.  I'll  
produce a list of leaf nodes and start listing the candidates that  
would benefit from the TextType typing, and those that wouldn't.

Cheers,
Chris

On Mar 24, 2008, at Mar24---9:13:35 AM, Mark Servilla wrote:

> A Monday morning discussion on this subject with Duane Costa has
> provided me with some excellent clarity on this issue.
>
> My previous, and perhaps overzealous, musings over separating meaning
> from presentation is best restated such that: there are elements in  
> EML
> that are well structured and should be reserved for the pure semantic
> meaning of the content (e.g., taxonomicCoverage) so that machine-based
> parsing can be effective, while there are other elements that best
> convey meaning through presentation-based formatting (e.g. title).
>
> Duane said it quite eloquently, "the former can be rigorously
> machine-parsed, while the latter is a blob of text that is inherently
> more presentation oriented"
>
> If this is a better appreciation of the issue and basically a
> restatement of Margaret's email (I should have read more carefully),
> then I agree with her note on the judicious replacement of xs:strings
> with txt:TypeText.
>
> My apologies for any distractions that I may have caused.

_________________________________________________________________
christopher jones       cjones at msi.ucsb.edu      (805) 680-5946
marine science institute  university of california, santa barbara
_________________________________________________________________