To pick up on one small item in Tom's message:
On Thu, 2 Dec 2004 Thomas Baker wrote:
> -- I'm slightly bothered by the wording that a string or a
> rich value "is a representation of" the resource. Maybe
> I'm reading "representation of" a bit too literally, but
> to me the words evoke something like a visual depiction.
> For example, a portrait photograph can be "a representation
> of" Andy Powell. For me, a wording like the following
> would not have the same associations:
>
> Each... string stands for the resource...
>
> Each rich value... is some text... that stands for the
> resource...
>
In Computer Science, the term 'representation' or 'physical
representation' means a way of making some structured item, or
whatever, into a series of character string bytes (or I suppose
strictly into a seqeunce of 1s and 0s) so that it can be transmitted
over a network, or stored in a file. The trouble is that the 'man in the
street' understands something different by the term - imagining a
picture or some such.
Another word for the same thing that is becoming accepted
because XML talks about it (and much more trendy!) is
'serialisation'. So maybe we could have:
Each rich value... is some text... that serialises the
resource...
Then we argue about whether it is spelt with a 'z' or an 's'!
Ann
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Ann Apps. IT Specialist (Research & Development), MIMAS,
The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 161 275 6039 Fax: +44 (0) 0161 275 6040
Email: [log in to unmask] WWW: http://epub.mimas.ac.uk/ann.html
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