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Michael Champion wrote:
> I'd also note that the slightly desperate tone of
> some of the early posts in this thread remind me
> of SGML advocates in the '90s, who could see the
> benefits that standardized markup could bring and
> couldn't believe why the world didn't realize them.
Having been one of those who undoubtedly exhibited the
"desperate tone" let me say that you're probably right on the analogy
to the SGML folk who knew why standard markup was good but couldn't
understand why others couldn't see it.
But, it is worse than that... You see, we've been here
before... Back in the early 80's when we were beginning the process of
defining what eventually became X.400, X.500, ASN.1 etc., the ASN.1
world had a long drawn-out battle with the SGML folk over the encoding
to use. For many really good reasons (processing speed, compact
encoding, clarity of specification, etc.) ASN.1 beat the forces of
IBM, Goldfarb, etc. and all was good. Until the 90's when the SGML
guys came screaming back with HTML and XML while ASN.1 got dragged
down with the rest of the OSI mess. Now, it is at least 20 years after
this debate began and there is still no end in sight. But, the basic
principles of good design haven't changed. It is *still* better to
design using abstract concepts, not concrete and there is *still* a
need for non-textual encodings...
bob wyman
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