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List:       xml-dev
Subject:    Re: [xml-dev] What are the practical, negative consequences of thinking that attributes are metadata
From:       Michael Kay <mike () saxonica ! com>
Date:       2017-02-15 15:57:57
Message-ID: E51A1865-40F8-447B-88C3-EE6FF8AF8347 () saxonica ! com
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In its historical origins, textual content is what the human reader gets to see and \
attributes are instructions to the compositor. "Document-oriented" XML designs \
continue to use this convention, and it does no harm. It's nice to know, for example, \
that string() applied to a mixed content element will give you meaningful text.

But that's only a convention. It's fairly meaningless for "data" as distinct from \
"documents". It's a useful convention, but attributes are metadata only if the \
document designer chose to follow this convention.

Michael Kay
Saxonica

> 
> Besides, what difference does it make if people think that attributes are metadata? \
> Can you give me a concrete, practical example showing where bad things happen \
> because someone thought that attributes are metadata? 

I had one this morning where I wanted a document to contain a summary of error \
messages extracted from various specs, and knowing that you can do string(xx) to get \
the message text, ignoring all the markup, is very handy.




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