RE: any semantic diff between a file name and directory name?

[<rob.cavicchio@emc.com>]

Robert P. J. Day [mailto:rpjday@crashcourse.ca] wrote:

>    i'm perusing the semantic markup of someone who has created their
> own XML language which, in all, looks fairly similar to docbook, but
> this person has explicitly defined two elements -- "file-name" and
> "directory-name" -- to be used for that respective markup.
> 
>    i'm aware that docbook has the standard "filename" element and, as
> a longtime unix/linux user, i'm well aware that directories are simply
> special cases of files and i have always marked up directory names
> with just <filename>.


From a technical perspective a directory name and a file name might be the same, but the average computer user would likely scratch his/her head at that notion. So I could imagine a situation in which an author might want to treat the two items differently in order to communicate better with the average user.

I personally don't see the need for such a distinction in the types of documentation that I write, but I don't think it's that strange. So as usual, "it depends".  :-)


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Rob Cavicchio
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EMC Captiva
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