Tony Proctor wrote: >> Wes Groleau <groleau+news@freeshell.org> wrote in >>> Tony Proctor wrote: >>>> As a contrived illustration, consider some free-form notes that >>>> wanted to reference a person's name, address during a particular >>>> year, and the date they moved there: >>>> >>>> <Person("Anthony Proctor")> lives in <Person("Tony >>>> Proctor").Address("2007-10-01").Country> and moved there in >>>> <Event("ProctorMove").Year> >>>> >>> I and many others have thought about ways to tag words and phrases >>> in free-form text with XML tags and attributes to carry the linking >>> information. But as far as I know, none of us have ever actually >>> produced a working implementation. > > Interestingly Wes, the snippet of my post that you quote here has nothing to > do with XML. Although I did mention XML somewhere, it was to point out the You offered an example of tagging parts of text in an "XML-like" style, so I thought I'd mention that others had had similar idea--similar to that _part_ of your ideas. > inappropriateness of it since it's designed for hierarchical data, and > family relationships are not hierarchical - they're a "network". XML and HTML are hierarchical in structure, as is GEDCOM. BUT all three do have cross-referencing mechanisms. -- Wes Groleau ---- The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers. -- Thomas Jefferson

BTW, I apologise Wes for attributing the original post here to you rather than to "JD". I had misread the quoted section :-) Tony Proctor "Wes Groleau" <groleau+news@freeshell.org> wrote in message news:kKI8j.3439$c82.1373@trnddc01... > Tony Proctor wrote: > > >> Wes Groleau <groleau+news@freeshell.org> wrote in > > >>> Tony Proctor wrote: > >>>> As a contrived illustration, consider some free-form notes that > >>>> wanted to reference a person's name, address during a particular > >>>> year, and the date they moved there: > >>>> > >>>> <Person("Anthony Proctor")> lives in <Person("Tony > >>>> Proctor").Address("2007-10-01").Country> and moved there in > >>>> <Event("ProctorMove").Year> > >>>> > >>> I and many others have thought about ways to tag words and phrases > >>> in free-form text with XML tags and attributes to carry the linking > >>> information. But as far as I know, none of us have ever actually > >>> produced a working implementation. > > > > Interestingly Wes, the snippet of my post that you quote here has nothing to > > do with XML. Although I did mention XML somewhere, it was to point out the > > You offered an example of tagging parts of text in an "XML-like" style, > so I thought I'd mention that others had had similar idea--similar > to that _part_ of your ideas. > > > inappropriateness of it since it's designed for hierarchical data, and > > family relationships are not hierarchical - they're a "network". > > XML and HTML are hierarchical in structure, as is GEDCOM. > BUT all three do have cross-referencing mechanisms. > > -- > Wes Groleau > ---- > The man who reads nothing at all is better educated > than the man who reads nothing but newspapers. > -- Thomas Jefferson