RE: [xml-dev] Re: determining ID-ness in XML

["Champion, Mike" <Mike.Champion@SoftwareAG-USA.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bullard, Claude L (Len) [mailto:clbullar@ingr.com]
> Sent: Friday, November 02, 2001 9:33 AM
> To: Leigh Dodds; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: RE: [xml-dev] Re: determining ID-ness in XML
> 
> It requires 
> agreements that are somewhat abstract and that is 
> why guys like Dan Connolly said, "I just can't grok 
> HyTime."  It wasn't simply obscure; it was saying something 
> that it takes time and experience to understand; 

The same is said about Nostradamus by his devotees ... :~)

> leading inevitably to the 
> reinvention of Hytime under another name and 
> that we may have to come back and do this 
> again with even higher costs.  This is how 
> 80/20 bites us.  

Probably so ... the formulation of the InfoSet/PSVI and the trend toward
defining "XML" operations on an abstract data model rather than syntax is
problem a step in the direction that HyTime took 10 years ago. And rapidly
becoming equally obscure, one might add ... 

Maybe the world should have tried harder to figure out what HyTime had to
say before jumping on HTML and XML. BUT "worse is better" wins just about
every time, deal with it!  As I age, I get increasingly annoyed that natural
selection choose all sorts of "worse is better" designs for my joints,
muscles, neurons, etc.... and there's about as much point in hoping for the
world to repeal the 80/20 rule as there is of hoping for eternal youth.