On Mon, Sep 30, 2002 at 01:00:23PM -0600, why the lucky stiff wrote:
| Just had an idea. Do what you will with it...
| We've talked about #DOMAIN. We've looked at alternatives to the caret.
| My main problem with both is what if you've got to mix domain types?
| So I've been wondering if we could do short aliases for domains.
Hello Why. We've considered this before (although not publicly)
and I feel that if we want to keep the "presentation" aspect of
YAML free of the "machine" requirments, aka the type information,
then this should properly be done in a schema.
The biggest problem here is that it adds another data element
(the prefix assigned to an alias) to our information model. This
isn't necessarly a bad thing, but it is yet another thing which
can "bleed" over from our syntax (parser level) to higher levels
where processing takes place. While this may seem innocent enough,
it is more complexity. I'd rather focus on getting a strong schema
system out there first and see if this addresses the concern of
synax verbosity without altering the information model.
If we go this way we have to be careful. The namespace mechanism
for XML was oringally a "syntax" level feature, and not considered
part of the "canonical" form of XML. Thus, people agreed that the
prefix could change, but the essential content of the document
would remain the same. This agreement was kept by a majority of
the tools... except XPath and XSLT, who used the prefix in the
content itself. In short, the prefix moved from a cute syntax
trick into actual complexity which all XML processes must manage
and all users must deal with.
Assume the following:
--- #PREFIX:why:whytheluckystiff.com,2002
- why
If I strip the #PREFIX do I change the content? The answer is
unfortunately, YES. Thus, this is a big (quite significant)
change to the information model. I'd like to completely exhaust
all other options before we move forward with this approach.
Best,
Clark
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