Concerns over semantics after transformation...

Subject: Concerns over semantics after transformation...
From: Guy_Murphy@xxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 16:06:03 +0100
Hi.

This isn't really an issue that keeps me awake at night, I I don't really
percieve this being a common issue..... however, I accept that some people
are concerned that in transforming from XML to somethig else for
presentation there is semantic loss.

Now, I don't think that any solution to this problem should be forced on
the developer, I think approaches that seek to strong arm developer into
doing somebodies notion of the "right thing" are often a good way of
hobbling a system, but it might be worth looking for a way to preserve
semantic *references* while still presentational semantics given with FOs
(and any other presentation objects that come along).

So I got to thinking, and I confess that I haven't thought on this much so
it might fall flat on its face, but what the hell.

Reading over the DDML Note (and having looked at DCDs etc), might it not be
possible *if the author so desires* to place references in result FOs to an
element description in a DDML describing the element in the source that is
to be associated with the result. If DDML where beefed up to support not
just literal schema but more general but still formal descriptions of the
elements concerned.... might this aid user agents make inferences beyond
what has been described for presentation by the author.

Now I think we have to be careful here, I do not think it is right or
proper to start of down a track that strips the Web designer of control
over presentation regardless of anybodies notion of "the right thing", but
might a mechanism be bought easily here to facilitate inference?

Just a thought.

Cheers

     Guy.



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