Re: is that a fork in the road?

["W. E. Perry" <wperry@fiduciary.com>]

Sean McGrath wrote:

> In summary, I'm saying three things:
>
> 1) XML "partical physics" is interesting but engineers shouldn't have
> to worry about it in their day jobs.

Indeed. Nor will they if the basic piece of XML-handling software,
placed at the point where documents are received and prepared for
handling by a local process, first parses arriving XML into its
well-formed 'particles', breaking them out of the larger structures in
which they might have been transmitted, and then instantiates them under
local control into the specific datatypes, element hierarchies and
larger data structures which the local process expects.

> 2) Unlike partical physics, with XML we get to define the basic
> building blocks of matter rather than have them foisted upon us by an
> external reality.

Indeed. And redefine them at either greater or lesser granularity at
each node, as the local process there may require (it might sometimes
even be a wave- rather than a particle-based process). The effective
common form of data is that in which it may be instantiated to be
understood and usefully processed by local functionality, without regard
to the form or structure in which it was received, or that in which it
may be required later by a downstream process.

> 3) I believe WF XML would make a great fundamental compound on which
> to build.

Indeed. What else has the same atomic integrity and yet is so mutable to
various very different processes.

Respectfully,

Walter Perry