Eve
At 03:56 PM 1/8/98 -0500, Chris wrote:
>Also, it seems that using an <Author> tag without a VALUe attribute
>makes sense if Mr. Baker isn't converting back and forth to objects at
>all, but is just doing something simple with authors - which I have a
>sneaking suspicion is all he's trying to do.
>
>Jonathan Robie wrote:
>>
>> At 09:17 AM 9/30/97 -0400, Tyler Baker wrote:
>>
>> >I would think that in these cases an "author" tag should embed its
>> >content as follows <author>Mr John Smith</author>, rather than how
>> >Microsoft CDF embeds its content which is <author VALUE="Mr John Smith"
>> >/>.
>>
>> I can't speak for Microsoft, but my guess is that they are simply using XML
>> in the manner most analogous to objects in object oriented systems. In an
>> object, the attributes are the data values:
>>
>> class Author
>> {
>> String name; // e.g. "Mr John Smith"
>> };
>>
>> Here they have used the name VALUE in a similar way:
>>
>> class Author
>> {
>> String VALUE; // e.g. "Mr John Smith"
>> };
>>
>> One very easy way to change objects into XML elements is to use one element
>> for each object, and use attributes to model the data members:
>>
>> <author VALUE="Mr John Smith"
>> >/>
>>
>> The reason attributes are better for this is that an object may have many
>> data members, and these are distinguished by names. The element content
>> only has one place to put things, and there is no name associated with it.
>>
>> >Is this simply just a design preference, or else is there a concrete
>> >reason why what seemingly is content should be embedded as an attribute.
>>
>> To me, Microsoft's method makes sense if what you are doing is converting
>> objects to XML, but your preferred method ("<author>Mr John
>> Smith</author>") makes more sense if you are converting objects to XML and
>> back.
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
>>
>> jonathan@texcel.no
>> Texcel Research
>> http://www.texcel.no
>>
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