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Elliote Rusty Harold (he of three names) wrote:
> This is exactly the situation Walter Perry has been
> talking about for several years...
> In this approach the XML you present to the world
> claims to be nothing more than your representation of
> your data. It does not purport to be a representation
> of somebody else's data.
It may work for Walter to claim that the data is his and not
someone else's but it isn't ok for at pubsub.com . The function we're
providing is content-based routing -- we're not doing re-publishing,
data mining, or other stuff (yet). Thus, when we pass data to you,
we're claiming that it *is* someone else's data -- it just got to you
by flowing through our content-based PubSub routers. We don't claim
the data and we take no responsibility for it (within the limits of
applicable law...)
So, Perry's approach won't work for us... He's got a different
kind of application. We are an intermediary: like proxies or
traditional address-based routers.
> But you really should have a sit down with Walter.
It would be easy since we're both in New York... However, if
Walter talks the way he posts, I'm afraid it wouldn't be too useful.
You see, to me, Walter's posts are sort of like "XML without a
schema."... The stuff appears to be very well formed (I typically
can't find any spelling or grammar mistakes.) But, frankly, I haven't
been able to figure out how to map onto the real problems of system
design the various things that he says about philology, poetry,
aesthetics, etc. He appears to see some vital and important connection
-- however, he doesn't seem to be willing to take the effort to
explain it in ways that make sense to those of us who don't already
understand whatever it is that he understands. It's sort of like
finding a <pubDate> field which clearly contains what the author
considers to be a date -- yet, my code can't handle it yet.
I fear that Walter and I come from different schools... I grew
up believing the Aristotelian principle that "A speaker is responsible
for knowing the warrants of his audience." By this is meant that the
speaker, if he wishes to be understood, must understand the language,
usage, customs, values, prior beliefs, etc. of his audience. A speaker
who does not understand the warrants of his audience cannot help being
misunderstood. To me, Walter is one who speaks without concern for the
warrants of his audience. He presents well-formed texts that may make
sense using some dictionary, topic-map, or schema that he understands,
however, he doesn't take the time and effort to translate those texts
into schemas and dictionaries that I understand.
I wouldn't go on about this except that I think that it really
is relevant to this conversation about Postel's Law... and the subject
of interoperability via schema-free XML.
My apologies to Walter for using you as an example. You may
now flame me at will. But, please try to use simple words...
bob wyman
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