RE: Namespaces, schemas, Simon's filters.

["Fuchs, Matthew" <matthew.fuchs@commerceone.com>]

And where do you put the people who have the RTFTRJ gene?  I don't have a
URL, but it stands for the Right Tool For The Right Job.

When I was at Disney Imagineering R&D, I actually switched from Scheme,
considered the ultimate TSBOOWTDI language, to Perl, considered the ultimate
TIMTOWTDI, and spent many, many hours happily building XML processing stuff.
They are both beautiful.  (The real ultimate TIMTOWTDI was PL/I - an ugly
beast, and the real ultimate TSBOOWTDI language is the Turing machine.)

The beauty of Perl is not that it has so many pieces, but that if you fit
them together correctly in the right circumstances, amazing things happen.
It's a real funky toolbox that's fun to explore, and if you want to do text
processing, it's the RTFTRJ.  And, of course, as you learn the toolbox,
magic becomes easier and easier.  For Perl, things only look like a
cartesian product until you begin to understand the pieces.

The beauty of Scheme is not that it's simple, but that its core constructs
are so incredibly powerful.  If you're exploring in the realm of ideas, you
can get tremendous mileage out of simple combinations, although the results
may not be so simple - again, in the right area it's the RTFTRJ.  So that's
what I used for my dissertation.  Again, it doesn't look like much until you
begin to see how the pieces work together.

The downside to TIMTOWTDI is you just end up with random junk, and the
downside to TSBOOWTDI is you put a Stalinist straightjacket on everything.
In the argument over local names, the TSBOOWTDI answer is "all elements must
be in namespaces, therefore put them in a namespace NOW!"  The TIMTOWTDI
answer would be to randomly decide on an element by element basis (no one
seems to be arguing that one).  In the middle, I've argued that local names
should be unqualified where their structure (if not semantics) is not
intended to be global, and Rick has countered that where the local element
is only adding further constraints to the global, then it should be in the
global's namespace.  And I suspect that this is the RTFTRJ answer, because
the decision is based on the job to be done, not the author's genetics.

Matthew

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sean McGrath [mailto:sean.mcgrath@propylon.com]
> Sent: Friday, August 31, 2001 12:46 AM
> To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: RE: Namespaces, schemas, Simon's filters.
> 
> 
> [Matthew Fuchs]
> 
> >Every time you have orthogonal ways of doing the same thing,
> >you end up with a cartesian product of cases.
> 
> Yes. There are those who find great beauty in these cartesian
> products and hours of endless intellectual fun munching
> on the combinations - they have the TIMTOWTDI gene[1].
> These people typically love human language
> and literature. Many have a background in the arts. Some of then
> are linguists. Many of them prefer Perl for text processing.
> 
> Then there are those with the TSBOOWTDI gene[1]. They see
> beauty in simple things and get their kicks out of
> coming up with ways to re-use a handful of core facilities
> in new ways. Many of them prefer Python for text processing.
> 
> I have the TSBOOWTDI gene. I can think of numerous
> people I know who have the TIMTOWTDI gene and
> one or two Rennaisance men with both! The latter
> tends to smother the former in standards work.
> 
> If I list the top ten smartest people I know, 8 are
> TIMTOWTDI's.
> 
> However the top two are hybrid TIMTOWTDI / TSBOOWTDI.
> 
> East is east and west is west and never the twain shall
> meet.
> 
> Sean
> 
> [1] There Is More Than One Way To Do It
> http://www.perl.org/press/glossary.html
> 
> [2] There Should Be One Obvious Way To Do It
> http://www.nevada.edu/~cwebster/Python/
> 
> 
> 
http://www.propylon.com
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