> Paschoud,J wrote:
>> 1) Somebody's nth rule about data normalisation (etc, etc) deprecates
>> attempts to embed extra information (such as a date - relative or
>> absolute) within data that purports to be something else (such as a
>> version identifier). If a human or machine recipient of 2 or more
>> files/objects wants to determine which is newer, shouldn't s/he/it be
>> comparing some separate datestamp attributes; not version identifiers?
I think this is a fair point. Identifying a thing is a different task
from identifying the relationship between things. It's because of this
very issue that the identifiers debate gets so complicated so quickly.
Overloading identifiers with additional metadata (date stamps, DRM
info, versioning info, etc) can be problematic.
>> 2) If HTML is dynamically generated from some XML/XSLT combination
>> (even
>> if previously generated HTML is cached, for however long, for runtime
>> efficiency), should it be regarded as a 'version'? ...or just a
>> 'visible
>> rendering'? ...of the content that created it? What happens if the
>> rendering is further altered by effects of the browser (font
>> overrides,
>> etc), that a particular human end-user is using to actually render the
>> HTML viewable/usable? Does each viewing of the HTML constitute a new
>> 'version' (I hope not!). I think this produces extra reasons to
>> support
>> Paul's suggestion, that only the original XML content should be
>> versioned, not the result of any combination of processes to render
>> it,
>> because not all of those processes may be under the control of whoever
>> cares about the versions.
>>
>
> Yes, I think I agree with this. I think this relates to a question Andy
> Powell has asked on a couple of occasions: what is it that identifiers
> in a
> LOM record identify, i.e. what is a LOM record about? He phrases this
> in
> terms of the entities given in the Functional Requirements for
> Bibliographic Records
> (http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/frbr1.htm#3.2).
>
> I think XML and HTML are two different manifestations of the same
> work, in
> two different formats, but not necessarily two different versions. You
> could encode the relation in the metadata using isFormatOf and
> hasFormat
> relationships; if the XSLT does more than re-format, then in the LOM
> you
> have isBasedOn/isBasisFor reltationships--for that to work the LOM
> records
> would have to be about the manifestation, which makes sense when you
> consider the technical category as well.
Incidentally this is an issue that the accessibility metadata people in
IMS and elsewhere have been grappling with for some time.....
Bye
Lorna
--
Lorna M. Campbell
Assistant Director
Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards (CETIS)
Centre for Academic Practice, University of Strathclyde
+44 (0)141 548 3072
http://www.cetis.ac.uk/
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