xml-dev - RE: Why the Infoset?

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

I am a little leery of that, Sean, for a couple of 
reasons:

1.  It is done.  There are people who can do it.
Maybe the rest of us just learn how.

2.  One man's abstraction is another man's data. 

Trying to teach XML yesterday, I watched that 
glazed over oxygen starve look as I presented the 
infoSet abstractions and that look resolves 
to "JUST SHOW ME CODE!!!".  Sure I can do that, 
but then I am not teaching XML, I am teaching 
ADO.  Monkey mind: two moons.  Unless we absorb 
the abstractions, all we have is "monkey see monkey do".  

If we learn the abstractions, then we are able to 
move easier among the systems that implement them. 
If we can't, then I might as well just teach them 
ADO and let them get to coding because that is what 
they want to do.  Sure, we become a monkey tree 
after that.  

I think the best idea is for one of the grove 
experts (ELIOT!) to draft something and 
everyone else learn by hacking that. Monkey 
see, monkey do.

len 
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/lensongs.ram

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Sean McGrath [mailto:sean@digitome.com]

At 08:45 01/08/00 -0500, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
>Sounds like a grove plan to me.
>

Yes, but we need to jettison the other umpteen layers of abstraction
in the grove stuff that keep this simple idea from
sprouting wings!