Re: The relentless march of abstraction (fwd)

[John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>]

Dave Winer scripsit:

> 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, 

Henry is a fine fellow who has done much good work.  His view of the
Infoset is not the only view, nor is this potted summary (IMHO) a fair
representation of even Henry's view, much less the total view.

(I speak as an editor of the Infoset, but not officially for the Core WG.)

> There will be adoption where [XML is] as easy and forgiving as
> HTML was in 1994.

That will never happen, thanks to draconian error recovery.  Hopefully
XML will never become such a mess as HTML has become, either.

> The relentless march to abstraction is good for keeping standards wonks
> employed, but it doesn't do bupkis for interop and level playing fields and
> progress towards new Pleasure Buttons For The People. (Which is why HTML was
> such a breath of fresh air and so successful.)

Without standards, there is no interoperability, much less a level
playing field.

-- 
There is / one art             || John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>
no more / no less              || http://www.reutershealth.com
to do / all things             || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
with art- / lessness           \\ -- Piet Hein