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- Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
- Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!torn!watserv1!watdragon.waterloo.edu!drraymon
- From: drraymon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Darrell Raymond)
- Subject: Re: SGML and Data Representation
- Message-ID: <BrrMCH.4LK@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
- Organization: University of Waterloo
- References: <9207202246.AA15855@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
- Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 00:50:40 GMT
- Lines: 28
-
- In article <9207202246.AA15855@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, DRMACRO@RALVM13.VNET.IBM.COM ("Dr. "Eliot Kimber" Macro") writes:
- >As a friendly challenge and an educational experience for me, I
- >challenge you to present here data expression methods you think SGML
- >documents cannot express and I will define ways of expressing them. A
- >six pack of my finest homebrew (or reasonable alternative should you
- >not be a beer drinker) says I can't be stumped. Either way we'll
- >all learn something valuable.
-
- Well, let's try an example and see what happens:
-
- I have a text of some length that contains many elements that overlap.
- I want you to find a way to tag the document so that the tags demarcate
- all the possible intersections of the elements. For example:
-
- <X>now is the <Y>time</X> for all good men</Y>
-
- This tagging shows an X and a Y element that overlap only for "time",
- but have their own content otherwise (X is "now is the time", and Y
- is "time for all good men"). If it helps, think of yourself describing
- a Venn diagram and all its possible intersections.
-
- What I want you to do is tell me how you would mark up such a document
- where the number of overlapping components is n. Note that the number of
- possible intersections is 2**n - 1. And to count as "expressed by SGML",
- the description must be within what SGML can enforce; if the DTD permits
- some other reasonable interpretation of the document, you lose.
-
- -Darrell.
-