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It's
an old hangover from The SGML Way. It was adapted as a
sales
slogan for XML. Nothing in XML presupposes that
separation. It is a best practice issue. One does it so
that
each layer of the system handles only the properties
it
needs. Such layers include the organizations and humans
who
process the information most effectively in a form and
using
names most familiar in that domain. That is why we
have
XSLT etc. Node is nodes, properties is properties.
Names
make the most difference to the mammals and they
will
fight to the death for them.
Umm...
human readability is useful. It takes some practice,
but
even when an IDE is more productive, occasionally you
have
to open the file and poke and peek. Note that even
with
all of the Visual apps, you still need to edit code. True
for C,
Basic, Java etc and just as true for XML.
Len
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard
Ekam
sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h
Sorry if this is an old, dead horse on this list,
but does anyone see any substance in the supposed "separation of content
from presentation" feature of XML?
Since we had this years ago with
databases and server-side scripts, I'm thinking this (and certain
other misconceptions) are just attempts
to create visual, easily demonstrable features
for what is an inherently non-visual
technology. Since XML no doubt owes some
of its hype to its (distant) relation to HTML, which is visual, people wanted
to be shown features of XML that they could "see."
In the same vein, has anyone else noticed lots of
demonstrations of XML-using applications that make a point of exposing
the XML itself, as if its readability were an asset to the end user? Since XML
works in the background, it's hard to demonstrate its effects on the
application from the user's point of view.
I'm thinking that being able to explain the root
causes of these misconceptions will help me in explaining to people why they
ARE misconceptions.
Thanks!
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