RE: intertwined specs

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

The simple things are simple to do.  Doing a 
lot of simple things that don't get in 
each other's way can get hard.

I commiserate with that.  The idea that 
I have to learn an algebra to  Select This 
Where This Is That really gives me yawns. 
It means we wait for better tools.  On the 
other hand, the SML guys set out to simplify 
XML.  How is that going?

It would have been nicer if HyTime had gotten 
to groves sooner.  Spilt milk, lessons learned, 
and all that.  It wasn't as obvious then as 
it might seem to be now.  No trail is until 
some fool with a machete cuts it.

Len 
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

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


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


The way I like to put it is that "simple things should be simple to do".  I 
think that's what is getting lost in the intertwined jungle of specs.

I don't want to get in the way of 
enterprise-data-integrators-connecting-thousands-of-legacy-systems-to-create
-knowledge-from-raw-atoms.

On the other hand, I don't want their needs to obscure the simple and 
powerful stuff you can do without the heavy-duty complexity.  And that, I'm 
afraid is what's happening now.  Molehills all seem to look like mountains 
to the people with nuclear weapons, or something like that.

It's nothing new - I bounced off of HyTime pretty violently because it 
didn't clearly offer any simple way to do simple projects.  XML did offer 
such things, but now I think they've been buried under an incredible pile 
of brilliant clutter yet again.

Maybe some other organization will eventually take on XML much as the W3C 
took on SGML.  Always seems to produce an uproar, but there's some light in 
that heat.  And hey, maybe they'll have a less-restrictive confidentiality 
policy, and fewer dreams of machine intelligence.

Back to labeling that road map...