>>> [log in to unmask] 2004-10-20 21:24:16 >>> > it's easier for a human to key > <typeOfResource>cartographic</typeOfResource> > > than > > <typeOfResource>info:xv/1/mods/resourceType/1/cartographic</typeOfResource> > > and at some point, regardless of the magic of UIs, humans will have to > key these things. Copy and paste. I generate all my XML with a text editor (or XSLT), and even in the absence of long URIs it greatly reduces tedium and errors to make templates of frequently used structures and have them open in a separate editor window to copy from. > In other words, there may be some advantages for machine processing but > I want to know how this eliminates the human-readable list that will be > needed for input. And as we know, keeping two versions of the same list > is fraught with perils. Maintain only the machine-readable list, from which the human-readable list can be algorithmically generated. > I'm also not sure that having the info URI makes > adding to the list any easier. What we do seem to be doing is trading a > URI for a list for a URI for each element of the list. It makes the RDF folks happy. And URIs beyond the info variety can make "type" and "authority" attributes more than just wishful thinking, e.g. <subject authority="http://example.org/authfile.xml"> <topic>widgets</topic> </subject> A validation process could check that "widgets" really is an authoritative subject in the linked authority file (presuming greater MODS-MADS interaction once MADS is out of its draft stage, anyway). In some cases they might even do away with type attributes altogether, e.g. <identifier>urn:ISSN:0000-0000</identifier> rather than <identifier type="issn">0000-0000</identifier> They help make documents more self-describing, e.g. the Dublin core URIs that point to RDF descriptions of their usage. The "widgets" example above could make the topic a hyperlink, on display, to the authority record. --Andy