Perhaps a better example is a book, where chapters, sections, etc. have an 
explicit order to them.  Not all of the heirarchical material in the world 
is unordered.

-markh
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Edward C. Zimmermann" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2005 2:00 PM
Subject: Re: Proximity search and Brahmagupta


> Quoting "LeVan,Ralph" <[log in to unmask]>:
>
>>
>>
>> I've built systems with proximity across elements.  Imagine this case:
>> <rec>
>>   <author>C. J. Cherryh</author>
>>   <title>Brother at Arms</title>
>>   <author>Terry Pratchett</author>
>>   <title>Small Gods</title>
>>   </rec>
>
> I don't quite understand what you are trying to markup?
> What's the semantics? Multiple titles, multiple authors?
>
>>
>> I'm looking to see if Cherryh wrote "Brother at Arms".  The search is:
>> Author=cherryh prox/unit=element/distance=1 title="brother at arms"
>>
>> That means that the author must occur in the element immediately
>> preceeding the title.
>
> A very usefull query in something like:
>
> <rec>
>  <item>
>    <author>C. J. Cherryh</author>
>    <title>Brother at Arms</title>
>  </item>
>  <item>
>    <author>Terry Pratchett</author>
>    <title>Small Gods</title>
>   <item>
>  </rec>
>
> But it it not really the search for Cherrh as author and book title
> "Brothers at Arms" in the same rec\item instance?
>
> author=Cherryh AND:rec\item title="Brother at Arms"
>
> which I get as op you'd do prox/unit=item/distance=0
>
> (assuming that item only appears in the path <rec><item>)
>
> I must admit.. given something like:
> <rec>
>   <author>C. J. Cherryh</author>
>   <title>Brother at Arms</title>
>   <author>Terry Pratchett</author>
>   <title>Small Gods</title>
> </rec>
>
> I could not do what you want..
> Pragmatics would drive me to filter your input and add some tags
> like <item> as above to allow me to get the answers you want but...
>
> So by element what's the metric? Is each opening <tag> a count of an 
> element
> or each opening and closing? Or?
>
> <tag1> Word1 <tag2> <tag3> word2</tag3></tag2></tag1>
>
> How far is Word1 from word2 ?
>
> And here?
> <tag1>word1</tag1><tag2></tag2><tag3>word2</tag3>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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