At 06:17 PM 8/28/2006, Jim wrote:
I think that my serious suggestion a couple of days ago got lost
because of my joke. The joke was "uniquify". The serious
suggestion was "duplicate elimination". That is very clear, not
ambiguous, easy to say, and doesn't depend on any vocabulary that
requires further explanation.
I like "duplicate elimination". (Sorry for sliding by it, Jim, in my
eagerness to allow my hackles to be raised. :-)
As for "normalization" (in either orthography), to Andrew's asking
"Why invent new terminology?", I can only answer "because the old one
means nothing to me". I'm not schooled in database theory and neither
are many of the people with whom we need to communicate XSLT
concepts. (When talking to Classicists I'm happy to use terms from
Classics, but you wouldn't want me to insist on referring to "hapax
legomena" would you? Whether I would be describing this or something
else, I leave for you to ponder.)
Then too, "normalization" already means something distinct to me (and
to many others) from "node factorization" (which is obscure but at
least capable of definition) or "duplicate elimination" (which is
nicely clear and to the point). That something is nonetheless very
useful and necessary, and I certainly need a term for it; and
(turning the why invent new terminology question on its head)
"normalization" is already applied to it in fields such as
lexicography or textual criticism.
Regards,
Wendell
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