RE: appinfo considered harmful. Re: What is the advantage of RELA X incomparison to Schemas?

[Jeff Lowery <jlowery@scenicsoft.com>]

I would tend to agree that appInfo is a hook for a whole lot of unforeseen
bags that will be added to XML Schema in the future. The real danger it that
defacto standards will emerge for appInfo, some of which will conflict. 

On the other hand, I think in order to make XML Schema viable in the long
term I think it has to be recognized that solutions to all problem domains
cannot be encapsulated in in a single specification. Unforeseen applications
will emerge both short- and long-term, and to ignore that fact risks making
XML Schema a one-straightjacket-fits-all type solution. Over time, these
issues can be settled in a more orderly fashion than the current appInfo
will allow.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan Borden [mailto:jborden@mediaone.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2001 8:01 PM
> To: Joe English; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: appinfo considered harmful. Re: What is the 
> advantage of RELAX
> in comparison to Schemas?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Jonathan Borden
> The Open Healthcare Group
> http://www.openhealth.org
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> Joe English wrote:
> 
> > IMO, the *primary* purpose of a schema is that it can be given
> > to a programmer so that she can write programs that will 
> successfully
> > process and/or produce documents conforming to that schema.
> 
> And all the more reason not to employ a perhaps undocumented perhaps
> completely proprietary field.
> 
> >... But the primary purpose of a schema
> > is still as documentation for programmers and authors.
> >
> > 'appInfo' is useful because it can point to additional sources
> > of documentation.  Whether or not it is used to augment the PSVI
> > or perform extra validation seems to me a tertiary issue.
> >
> 
> We have "annotation/documentation" and "annotation/appinfo" 
> ... isn't former
> for documentation? If appinfo were defined as being explicitly for, or
> limited to, documentation, then I would not be raising this issue.
> 
> Certainly we can all think of perfectly useful things that we can use
> appinfo for. The problem isn't what good things it can be 
> used for, rather
> what bad things it can be used for.
> 
> -Jonathan
>