[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
Danny, you've just put your finger on the philosophical argument that
occupies many of us for our whole lives.
The struggle to judge --> to know if something or someone is good or bad, or
as George W Bush says, evil.
You could ask the same question about death. Is it good or bad that we die?
It's really impossible to know, but if I had to make a choice I'd say it's
bad. But does that mean I won't die? Unfortunately not. :-(
So let's agree that tag soup is bad. Let's assume that every format that's
deployed is far worse than the ones we can imagine. It often works that way,
that with a little bit of experience it becomes clear where we could have
done better. It happens in life too. If I could go back and change some of
the decisions I made in my youth I'd be happier, healthier, richer, wiser,
more prolific, more admired, etc etc. But I can't go back and change what I
did. Damn! ;->
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: "Danny Ayers" <danny666@virgilio.it>
To: <dave@userland.com>
Cc: <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 12, 2002 10:48 AM
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] What is Tag Soup?
> Though some of the points in the 'Tag Soup' piece [1] are reasonable
enough
> (the web *is* full of tag soup), there seems to be an implied conclusion
> that this is somehow a good thing. I don't think this is a valid
conclusion
> at all. Tag soup leads to a loss of communication, and tag soup inspired
> design does this systematically.
>
> The web is growing not only in the number of hosts, but also in its
> complexity - web services, semantic web, even blogger tricks like
trackback
> all contribute in this respect. Complex needn't mean troublesome though.
> Things like REST aim to avoid the Big Ball of Mud pattern [2], and
although
> the breaking of rules is often a creative activity, following good
practice
> reduces system breakage. The Big Ball of Mud pattern does work, but it
means
> a lot of wasted resources (mostly human).
>
> In a nutshell, I don't think "that's the way the world should be" follows
> from "that's the way the world is".
>
> Cheers,
> Danny.
>
> [1] http://scriptingnews.userland.com/whatIsTagSoup
> [2] http://www.laputan.org/mud/mud.html
>
>
> ---
> Danny Ayers
> <stuff> http://www.isacat.net </stuff>
>
> Idea maps for the Semantic Web
> http://ideagraph.net
>
>
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Jelks Cabaniss [mailto:jelks@jelks.nu]
> >Sent: 11 October 2002 22:53
> >To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> >Subject: RE: [xml-dev] What is Tag Soup?
> >
> >
> >G. Ken Holman wrote:
> >
> >> At 2002-10-11 07:19 -0700, Dave Winer wrote:
> >> >What is Tag Soup?
> >
> >"HTML" -- as practised by most (from Joe Homepager to Fortune 500).
> >
> >> I have used this term in my instruction for years to
> >> characterize the jumble of angle brackets acting like tags
> >> in HTML in pages that are accepted by browsers. Improper
> >> minimization, overlapping constructs ... stuff that looks
> >> like SGML markup but the creator didn't know or respect SGML
> >> rules for the HTML vocabulary. In effect a soupy collection
> >> of text and markup.
> >
> >... usually for visual effects in typical desktop graphical browsers.
> >It can also be well-formed -- a number of "HTML" editors do this when
> >you press the "indent" button several times:
> >
> > <blockquote>
> > <blockquote>
> > <blockquote>
> > This ain't no quote, but it's indented good,
> > ain't it?
> > </blockquote>
> > </blockquote>
> > </blockquote>
> >
> >Cheap FOs.
> >
> >> I've never seen the term defined anywhere.
> >
> >It was first mentioned on Usenet in December, '95 by Arjun Ray
> >(according to Google Groups.) Three years before -- December, '92 --
> >Dan Connolly wrote this to Tim Berners-Lee:
> >
> > ...
> > I'm just about to give up on the structure business. Do any
> > implementations have problems with <TITLE> elements in the
> > middle of the document? If not, I can just change the DTD so
> > that HTML is just "tag soup" -- anything goes anywhere.
> > ...
> >
> >
> >/Jelks
> >
> >
> >-----------------------------------------------------------------
> >The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org <http://www.xml.org>, an
> >initiative of OASIS <http://www.oasis-open.org>
> >
> >The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/
> >
> >To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list use the subscription
> >manager: <http://lists.xml.org/ob/adm.pl>
> >
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org <http://www.xml.org>, an
> initiative of OASIS <http://www.oasis-open.org>
>
> The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list use the subscription
> manager: <http://lists.xml.org/ob/adm.pl>
>
|
