Content or Metadata?

[Paul Prescod]

Mike Spreitzer wrote:
> 
> What about the list of authors of a scholarly paper?  Isn't that metadata for which order
> matters?

Think of it from a programming language perspective:

class doc:
	title: string
	published: date
	authors: list of string
	text: list of (para|list|img)

The authors property is unordered with respect to the other properties
but its domain is ordered. The *list of authors* is metadata for the doc
object.

In grove land we allow a single, particular property to be labeled as
the content property. In this case it would be the "text:" property. In
a language like Python, you would navigate "regular (metadata)"
properties like this:

doc.publisher.address.street

and content properties like this:

doc[5][3][2][4]

In the former, the name is significant. In the latter the position is
significant. All of this is explained at:

http://www.prescod.net/groves/shorttut

-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for himself
"I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more
specific." --Lily Tomlin

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