Re: [xsl] What is a better word for "de-duplication"?

Subject: Re: [xsl] What is a better word for "de-duplication"?
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 18:34:08 -0400
At 06:17 PM 8/28/2006, Jim wrote:
I think that my serious suggestion a couple of days ago got lost because of my joke. The joke was "uniquify". The serious suggestion was "duplicate elimination". That is very clear, not ambiguous, easy to say, and doesn't depend on any vocabulary that requires further explanation.

I like "duplicate elimination". (Sorry for sliding by it, Jim, in my eagerness to allow my hackles to be raised. :-)


As for "normalization" (in either orthography), to Andrew's asking "Why invent new terminology?", I can only answer "because the old one means nothing to me". I'm not schooled in database theory and neither are many of the people with whom we need to communicate XSLT concepts. (When talking to Classicists I'm happy to use terms from Classics, but you wouldn't want me to insist on referring to "hapax legomena" would you? Whether I would be describing this or something else, I leave for you to ponder.)

Then too, "normalization" already means something distinct to me (and to many others) from "node factorization" (which is obscure but at least capable of definition) or "duplicate elimination" (which is nicely clear and to the point). That something is nonetheless very useful and necessary, and I certainly need a term for it; and (turning the why invent new terminology question on its head) "normalization" is already applied to it in fields such as lexicography or textual criticism.

Regards,
Wendell

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