[whatwg] Section 1.7 "abstract language"
Ian Hickson
ian at hixie.ch
Thu Aug 13 19:10:34 PDT 2009
On Thu, 6 Aug 2009, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
>
> "This specification defines an abstract language for describing
> documents and applications, and some APIs for interacting with in-memory
> representations of resources that use this language."
>
> The phrase "abstract language" concerns me. It's not clear to me that a
> language can be abstract, nor is it clear to me what this phrase refers
> to, especially since it seems to be distinguished from the "concrete
> syntaxes that can be used to transmit resources that use this abstract
> language, two of which are defined in this specification."
>
> Perhaps there's some sort of abstract data model or information model
> here; but I don't believe that the word "language" is appropriate to
> describe this. Language as normally understood is a collection of actual
> words or symbols, written or spoken. It is not a collection of abstract
> concepts, at least not in any definition of the term I was able to find.
>
> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=define%3Alanguage&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10
What term would you recommend rather than "language" that is more
understandable than "data model" or "information model"?
Would "vocabulary" be ok?
--
Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
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