Mr. Overington,
Peter didn't specifically mention that his suggestion is an example of XML, although
he alluded to that fact. As many people have mentioned before on this list, XML is a
more appropriate mechanism for many of your inventions, and it is also a standard.
One of the neatest things about XML is that you can invent your own tags, as Peter's
example did below. Of course applications still must agree on the meanings of those
tags, but your suggestion has the same limitation.
A big advantage of XML is that even when the tags are not understood, they can still
be safely ignored without fear that other information is lost, garbled or otherwise
mangled.
Some other examples of how your XML tags may have been chosen are:
<CometCircumflex SentenceCode="12001">London</CometCircumflex>
or
<CometCircumflex SentenceCode="12001" Parameter1="London"/>
or
<CometCircumflex SentenceCode="12001" Parameter1="London">Thanks for visiting
our stand in London.</CometCircumflex>
or
<CometCircumflex SentenceCode="12001">Thanks for visiting our <Parameter
Number="1">London</Parameter> stand.</CometCircumflex>
Notice that in the last 2 examples an English string appears, so a reader without your
translation system will still have understandable text if your XML tags are ignored
(as most programs do when they don't understand XML.)
Also, even though English is provided in the last 2 strings, the other necessary
information (Sentence=12001 and Parameter #1=London) is included for your translation
algorithm. The author chose to use slightly different text than your standard "It was
a pleasure to welcome you to our stand at the recent exhibition in P1." That allows
the author to make minor deviations to customize his text for native speakers, yet the
author could still communicate with non-native speakers.
I should also mention that your proposed system still has some limitations. For
example if the conference were in Cologne, Germany, a Deutsch speaker would expect the
city name Köln instead.
I hope that this example improves your understanding of XML and how it may be applied
to your inventions. As others have mentioned, this topic is digressing from the
purpose of this message board and would be best discussed off line or in a different
forum.
- Shawn
Shawn Steele
Software Developer Engineer
Microsoft
My comments in no way endorse the original and are not intended to confer legitimacy,
rather they are merely intended to be educational.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
-----Original Message-----
>A document would contain a sequence such as follows.
>
>U+2604 U+0302 U+20E3 12001 U+2460 London U+2604 U+0302 U+20E2
You could just as easily have used
<S C="12001">London</S>
or
<S C="12001" P1="London"/>
