Personally, I like the distinction.
> It's far from clear to me that all information about information can be
> partitioned into "that which summarizes/supplements" and "that which is
> necessary to understand". Hmmm, if you re-write that second
The first class is external,additional,open-ended...
The second is essentially a part of the document itself
and a part of the interpretation ("understanding") of the doc:
it is constitutive for what the doc IS.
> condition as
> "that which can be used to support formal validation" then it starts
> to sound like a really material distinction... boy, I get nervous when
> we start bandying about the term "understand".
How about "Understand" == "interpret, have a blueprint for
assigning intended design to document's data".
> interesting. But these
> are matters certainly open to debate.
>
Yes.
--Jacek