xml-dev - RE: SGML, XML, redux

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

Then you should like the InfoSet since it 
threw off the years, isn't as rigorous as 
you think it should be, and certainly seems 
to be making you unhappy.  What you say about 
reinvention and throwing things away, etc. 
all certainly does look familiar.  One question:  

Can you do it better?  

Remember, the infoSet is simpler now than it would 
have been using groves.  Will your attempt 
to complete it make it simpler or add more of 
the same, or start over, or....?  Programmers  
who must ship running code in the next release 
cycle want to know.

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

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


-----Original Message-----
From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@simonstl.com]

I'd like to suggest that XML is very much an effort to throw off 'years of
wrestling with the problems of complete and rigorous definitions of markup
languages' and that reinvention of the wheel with what Paul Prescod termed
the 'simplicity vector' is necessary as part of that project.

It may not make the original inventors happy, and it's a lot of work, but
"Build one, or two, or three" to throw away is hardly unusual in this
industry.  What was it Schumpeter talked about as the engine of growth?
Creative destruction?