xml-dev - Re: Question About Namespaces and DTDs

[Matt Sergeant <matt@sergeant.org>]

On Wed, 26 Jul 2000, Simon St.Laurent wrote:

> At 04:33 PM 7/26/00 +0100, Matt Sergeant wrote:
> >Sure. Just like most posts to Perl help message boards are to do with
> >regexes - they are a fundamental and slightly confusing part of the
> >language, but not any more broken than any other standard out there (ever
> >tried to implement an NNTP or IRC server and you'll see what I mean about
> >the proliferation of broken standards out there).
> 
> I've never seen nearly as much disagreement among 'Perl experts' regarding
> regexes as I've seen among 'XML experts' regarding namespaces, even
> fundamentals.

Right, perl was a bad example, there being only one
implementation... Other computer fields that have multiple interpretations
of a single vague spec, such as perhaps IRC or NNTP, are more
relevant. There is dessent among NNTP server implementors over the right
way to do things (yes, even now), and yet NNTP servers have been working
fine for years.

> Of course beginners are confused - even on the best of days, that's normal.
>  I'm a lot more disturbed to see that the experts disagree as well.

Thats a good point, but a lot of these experts seem to be looking for a
holy grail, and thats a *good* thing. Maybe one day they'll find it and
make all our lives easier.

> Does that matter?  You seem to say no, I say yes.  

Well you are from NY, so I forgive you :-P

> Watch carefully over the next year or so to see what happens, I guess.

Thats pretty much my point. Developers "in the field" can just keep going
using the implementations they have right now, and eventually maybe you
guys will come up with something better, at which point we'll probably
think about switching over (after bitching for a while about how we don't
like the new spec as its not the same as the old one... :)

-- 
<Matt/>

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