Re: The relentless march of abstraction

[Dave Winer <dave@userland.com>]

Thanks David.

I irritate plenty of people, and it would irritate them even more if I said
who they are. Irritable people seem to not like to have their names
mentioned by people who irritate them. Even alluding to their existence is
enough to get them going sometimes. They Know Who They Are and So Much For
That.

I'm still puzzled about infosets. I can deal with it. ;->

Dave

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Megginson" <david@megginson.com>
To: "XML-Dev (E-mail)" <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2001 6:04 PM
Subject: re: The relentless march of abstraction


> Dave Winer writes:
>
>  > Just the first few paragraphs opened my eyes to where the process is
going
>  > with XML. I never understood what "infoset" was all about. Now that I
do, I
>  > don't get why the W3C has to get involved in it at all. I've always
felt
>  > that schema are only needed if you're storing XML content in a
relational
>  > database ...
>
> Unless this is a deliberate non-sequitur, the article must have
> misrepresented the Infoset pretty horribly.  The Infoset is just a
> minimum common data model that other XML-based specs can count on
> having available from applications (i.e. every spec can count on
> information about elements and attributes being available).  Of
> course, it came along after the fact, so much of its work was actually
> rationalizing stuff that was already out there, but Infoset is in no
> way a schema spec.
>
> I agree that schemas of all kinds are far, far overrated.  They're
> useful as authoring templates and for pre-release Q.A., but otherwise
> they give a false sense of security, like air bags (at best) and introduce
> enormous performance and security problems (at worst).
>
>  > I know I irritate the powerful people
>
> Who are these powerful people?  Most of the members of this list don't
> have the power to fire anyone else on the list or to make anyone else
> on the list rich.  Tim Berners-Lee has the power to veto W3C specs,
> for whatever that's worth, and Tim Bray has the power to make the
> foolish wither and dry up under his occasional irony, but that's about
> as far as anyone can go.
>
>
> All the best,
>
>
> David
>
> --
> David Megginson                 david@megginson.com
>            http://www.megginson.com/
>
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