Re: [lmi] Annotation: xml attribute or element?

[Greg Chicares]

On 2010-04-06 15:29Z, Vaclav Slavik wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-04-06 at 14:39 +0000, Greg Chicares wrote:
>>     <value>
>> +     <annotation>SECOND ANNOTATION STYLE</annotation>
>>       <key>GuarMandE</key> 
> 
> Elements are usually preferred for longer texts and if everything else
> in our format uses elements, then it's arguably more consistent to use
> them for annotations too. So I think I'd pick this style myself, but
> it's more of an aesthetic preference than anything else.

Okay, great, thanks. It will be an element. That also imposes useful
discipline: all elements (and their children, grandchildren, ad inf.)
could potentially have any attribute added, and if it's accidentally
added in an unexpected place, then we might overlook it. But an explicit
<annotation> element occurs only where we anticipate finding it, and
the program can enforce a rule requiring that it occur nowhere else,
so we can be sure that the product editor (eventually) will display all
this information.

I just got off a conference call where I found three crucial pieces of
information immediately in these annotations. No one else had that
information, so I was able to look sharp and save others the trouble of
searching for it, all because Wendy went to the trouble of annotating
the sources years ago.

Just an anecdote to illustrate how valuable this information is.