On Thu, 20 Feb 1997, Robert L. DeCandido wrote:

>      First of all, is it legal? I don't see why empty components can't be
>      used--the DTD allows them--but it does feel like cheating. On the
>      other hand I've always felt that the only reasonable way to deal with
>      computers was to lie to them...

This sounds like an interesting approach, but I wonder again if it isn't
concerned too much with how things _look_ and not about what they are in
relation to everything else in the f.a.?  An approach like the one Robert
outlined may make displaying a finding aid easier, but it certainly
doesn't seem like it would be helpful to a search engine like OpenText.
It would be the attribute value identifying the physical or intellectual
identity of the information contained within a particular element (like
<c0x> or <unitloc>) that would help a search engine to know something
about that bit of ASCII text other than the fact that it is ASCII text,
not the fact that a <c03> is ALWAYS a series or something like that.

My hunch would be that, even if it were technically possible to have
empty component elements, it isn't a good idea.  Creating such a rigidly
defined template seems to me like it completely defeats the spirit of
SGML.

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