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Many, if not most, computer models represent data as a tree. Some data, however, can't really be represented by a tree, because a "thing" can have multiple pare

Many, if not most, computer models represent data as a tree. Some data, however, can't really be represented by a tree, because a "thing" can have multiple parents. The example in the link: Example, with lines marked up: <line>I, by attorney, bless thee from thy mother,</line> <line>Who prays continually for Richmond's good.</line> <line>So much for that.—The silent hours steal on,</line> <line>And flaky darkness breaks within the east.</line> With sentences marked up: <sentence>I, by attorney, bless thee from thy mother, Who prays continually for Richmond's good.</sentence> <sentence>So much for that.</sentence> <sentence>—The silent hours steal on, And flaky darkness breaks within the east.</sentence> If you care about lines and sentences, this is difficult to represent as a tree.

TreeRingCounter 4y ago
Perfect, thanks.
lioeters 4y ago
One way to solve this could be to provide separate start/end tags without inner content. <line-start/><sentence-start/>I, by attorney, bless thee from thy mother,<line-end/> <line-start/>Who prays continually for Richmond's good.<sentence-end/><line-end/>
- thomascgalvin 4y ago
  Yeah, that's how the linked article does it, but that's ... icky? It's still a token spanning multiple parents, it's just masquerading as a couple of self-closing tags. Which, of course, is the point of the article, and why this is a difficult problem.
  - lioeters 4y ago
    Ah you're right, I should have read the article before commenting, haha. I agree it's not an ideal solution. A disadvantage I imagine is that this syntax pushes the problem onto the parser/consumer to keep track of overlapping regions. > Milestones are empty elements that mark the beginning and end of a component, typically using the XML ID mechanism to indicate which "begin" element goes with which "end" element. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overlapping_markup#Milestones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overlapping_markup#Milestones

TreeRingCounter 4y ago

Perfect, thanks.

lioeters 4y ago

One way to solve this could be to provide separate start/end tags without inner content. <line-start/><sentence-start/>I, by attorney, bless thee from thy mother,<line-end/> <line-start/>Who prays continually for Richmond's good.<sentence-end/><line-end/>

thomascgalvin 4y ago
Yeah, that's how the linked article does it, but that's ... icky? It's still a token spanning multiple parents, it's just masquerading as a couple of self-closing tags. Which, of course, is the point of the article, and why this is a difficult problem.
- lioeters 4y ago
  Ah you're right, I should have read the article before commenting, haha. I agree it's not an ideal solution. A disadvantage I imagine is that this syntax pushes the problem onto the parser/consumer to keep track of overlapping regions. > Milestones are empty elements that mark the beginning and end of a component, typically using the XML ID mechanism to indicate which "begin" element goes with which "end" element. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overlapping_markup#Milestones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overlapping_markup#Milestones