Jeni's Musings

Here’s a short document that is both valid XML and valid LMNL, and illustrates my point. It expresses the fact that paragraphs dominate sentences, plus the fact that hiliter markup can overlap either of them:

<p><s>Lolita, light of my life, [hilite}fire of my loins.</s> <s>My sin, my soul.{hilite]</s> <s>Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a [hilite}trip of three steps down the palate{hilite] to tap, at three, on the teeth.</s> <s>[hilite}Lo.</s> <s>Lee.</s> <s>Ta{hilite].</s><p>

<p><s>She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock.</s> <s>[hilite}She was Lola in slacks.</s> <s>She was Dolly at school.{hilite]</s> <s>She was Dolores on the dotted line.</s> <s>But in my arms [hilite}she was always Lolita.</s></p>

<p><s>Did she have a precursor?</s>[hilite} <s>She did, indeed she did.</s></p>

Throw away the XML tags, and you get just hilited ranges. Throw away the LMNL tags, and you get simple structure. Keep both, and you get an extended LMNL data model with p, s, and hilite ranges, where the s ranges have a parent pointer to the p ranges that dominate them.