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At 2:47 PM -0400 7/23/02, John Cowan wrote:
>People use mainframes, and XML too. If XML 1.0 had insisted
>that only CR-LF and LF were acceptable line terminators, don't you
>think an argument based on justice for Mac users would have been
>appropriate?
No, I don't. If XML 1.0 had not allowed bare carriage returns, then I
would expect Mac users to adjust. Guess what? They could. Today, I
easily and routinely process and generate XML ending in CR/LF and LF
only on my Mac. No hassles. Do you really think mainframe programmers
are so much stupider than Mac users that they can't do this too? Or
that a multi-million dollar mainframe is that much less capable than
a $1500 iMac?
The time to make this argument was in 1996 when XML 1.0 was being
developed. If at that point, bare CRs had been ruled out, I might
have argued for them. If at that point, you had argued that NEL
should be added to the white space production, I might have supported
you. That time has past. The costs of the change now vastly outweigh
the benefits.
Let's try to quantify those benefits. How many people use mainframes
today in a way that XML 1.0 presents them with problems? So far I
have yet to encounter *ONE* person who is actually inconvenienced by
XML in this fashion.
I challenge the XML working group to present a case based on actual
software and hardware used today in which the lack of NEL is a
problem. Specifically,
What currently sold, shipped, or supported software can handle NEL
but not CR or CR/LF? How many users does this software have, and how
many of these users actually need to use this software to process
XML? (Airline ticket agents typing forms into dumb terminals or any
other user who never actually sees or thinks about the XML doesn't
count.) Feel free to list more than one.
Let us also stop pretending that there are no costs associated with
releasing a new version of XML into the world. Let us tally the costs
of all the users who will upgrade and compare that to the benefit to
be achieved by releasing XML 1.1.
If you persist in this ridiculous claim that NEL is a matter of
justice, then let us consider the justice of forcing many users
around the world to upgrade their systems to support the few large
businesses and computer companies that still use mainframes. Is it
more just that the cost be borne be IBM and Citigroup or by tens of
thousands of individual developers?
>You mention the legal principle of "stare decisis". This is by no means
>applied in every area of the law, and in particular gives way before
>claims of natural equity. It is *not* always more important that the
>law be unchanging than that it do justice or right.
In a question of justice or rightness, no it is not. However, this is
simply not a question of justice in any plausible moral system I have
ever encountered. I do not understand how you can possibly phrase the
debate this in those terms. It is a question of costs and benefits.
There is more than one way to do it, and while some ways may be
better than others, the benefits of sticking with the established
way, even if it less than optimal, often outweigh the costs of
switching.
--
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| XML in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly, 2002) |
| http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian2/ |
| http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0596002920/cafeaulaitA/ |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
| Read Cafe au Lait for Java News: http://www.cafeaulait.org/ |
| Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.cafeconleche.org/ |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
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